The Southeast Asian nation, Malaysia, formerly ranked among the top ten global suppliers of bauxite to China, is poised to gain from Indonesia's most recent export embargo.
Data from Indonesia's customs show that in 2021, China bought 17.8 million tonnes of bauxite from Indonesia, making up nearly 15% of all imports. According to Statista data, China, the world's largest consumer, imported 107.42 million tonnes of bauxite in 2021.
Nik Nazmi, the Malaysian Minister of Natural Resources, Environment and Climate Change, said, "In this situation, if a country (Indonesia) has imposed a ban on the export of bauxite, then the global demand will shift to any other country that can supply those resources."
"In this case, demand for bauxite from Malaysia will be high, especially from China."
“Despite the fact that Malaysia has capped bauxite exports at 600,000 tonnes per month since 2019, with the majority of its exports in recent years going to China, the export limit is still ‘under-utilized’ and will not need to be increased for Malaysia to meet demand from China in 2023”, the minister added.
According to the Mineral and Geoscience Department, Malaysia's bauxite production fell by more than 96 per cent, from 27.7 million tonnes in 2015 to 900,561 tonnes in 2019. Following this, Malaysia's exports decreased by around 74 per cent, from 3.5 million tonnes in 2015 to about 912,118 tonnes in 2019.
Despite the lifting of the mining ban in 2019, new strict regulations, such as those limiting the amount of land that can be used for mining in Pahang between June 2020 and May 2021 and mandating environmental impact studies, led to a further decline in Malaysia's exports to just 227,691 tonnes in 2021.
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