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Indonesia's trade ministry would support allowing PT Freeport Indonesia to continue exporting copper concentrate after a cost-and-benefit analysis, a deputy minister said on Friday.
Resource-rich Indonesia has banned exports of copper concentrate, asking miners to process their output onshore and export higher value products instead, under a policy known as "commodity downstreaming".
The trade ministry is only one of a number of government agencies that have to sign off on reopening copper concentrate exports for Freeport, with the mining, finance and coordinating economic affairs ministries also involved.
Freeport's last export permit expired at the end of 2024, but the company has requested it can continue selling copper concentrate abroad because its local copper smelter was in repair after a fire in October last year.
"The trade ministry supports a plan to relax the export policy after weighing the cost and benefit analysis ... while also observing the sustainability of the government's natural resource downstreaming policy," deputy minister Dyah Roro Esti said in a statement.
Freeport Indonesia did not immediately respond to request for comment. Freeport-McMoran's executives last month said Jakarta has indicated to the company it would support allowing copper concentrate exports in 2025.