Photo: SOE Minister Erick Thohir meets the Chairman of the Adani Group, Gautam Adani in Singapore. (Screenshot via Instagram @erickthohir)
Jakarta, CNBC Indonesia – Gautam Adani should be proud of his achievements last year. Remember, 2022 will be a golden year for Adani because her wealth officially exceeds US $ 100 billion, which makes her the centi-billionaire.
Unmitigated, his position as the richest man in the world immediately rose to the very top. He is officially the richest person in Asia and at the world level he is only below Bernard Arnault and Elon Musk, in the top three richest people in the world.
Not without reason, he won this title because his wealth increased sharply in the last two years. Quoted from Forbes Real Time Billionaire, the owner of the Adani Group has an estimated net worth of US$ 116.7 billion or the equivalent of Rp. 1,809 trillion (assuming an exchange rate of Rp. 15,500/US$).
In line with this report, the Bloomberg Billionaire Index also places Adani as the richest tycoon in Asia with assets of US$ 110 billion (Rp 1,705 trillion).
As it turned out, Adani’s wealth increased due to the increase in commodity prices that occurred due to the Russian-Ukrainian war. In the previous year, his wealth was indeed bombastic or recorded at around US$ 75 billion, but he was still behind Mukesh Ambani, owner of Reliance Industries.
An important lesson from Adani is business diversification. Thanks to that, it is easier for him to increase his wealth if one of his sectors is on the rise. He is noted as a first-generation entrepreneur from Gujarat in the western region of India who started his commodity trading business in the 1980s, then his business octopuses expanded into the energy, ports, airports, transportation, defence, property and finance sectors over the next four decades.
In contrast to Ambani, whose wealth is concentrated in one company, Adani is recorded as having at least six companies with a valuation of more than 1 trillion rupees or the equivalent of Rp. 190 trillion (exchange rate of Rp. 190/rupee), in which several of these companies recorded outstanding stock performance in 2019. This.
The share prices of companies that are members of the Adani Group have jumped significantly this year, some have even recorded up to hundreds of percent. Currently there are nine public companies in India that are included in the Adani Group, an increase from the previous six companies. The new additions include Adani Wilmar, a joint venture with Singaporean agribusiness billionaire Kuok Khoon Hong, Wilmar International and two cement companies it acquired this year.
Business octopus reaches Indonesia
The supply of fuel for India’s domestic power plants was threatened with disruption due to disruptions to the world’s fuel supply chain. Hence, PM Narendra Modi called for increased purchases which led to record monthly imports of Indian thermal coal in 2022.
This is good news for Adani Enterprises, the country’s largest coal trader. Sure enough, according to market data company CoalMint, by June 2022, its market share had more than doubled on an annual basis to 7.3 million tonnes.
Adani Power, the country’s largest private power company, increased its coal imports to 1.4 million tonnes in June from only 154,000 tonnes a year earlier. Together, Adani’s subsidiaries as a whole accounted for 35% of India’s coal imports from April to June this year, reflecting the group’s growing dominance of the country’s infrastructure.
One of the companies that is the main backbone of Adani’s coal imports is a subsidiary of a company that owns coal mines in Indonesia. PT Adani Global is a subsidiary of Adani Enterprise which focuses on mining, logistics and coal trading. The company’s official website says that Adani obtained a production mining business license (IUP) in 2007.
This project in Indonesia is the Adani Group’s first overseas project in coal mining and operations. The company said that the decision to mine in Indonesia was in line with Adani’s long-term determination to overcome the problem of high demand for coal in India which lacks energy.
Adani’s coal mining is carried out through PT Lamindo Inter Multikon on a small island located in North Kalimantan called Pulau Bunyu. Data from Modi and Geoportal Minerba states that Lamindo has an active IUP for up to 2037 over a land area of 2,414 hectares or 12% of the total area of Bunyu Island.
Although the concession on the small island is said to have an increasingly widespread destructive power, the mining advocacy network, Lamindo, said that the company carries out environmental preservation programs on a regular basis, although it is still limited to cleaning beaches and providing clean water.
Lamindo also stated that the company’s presence on Bunyu Island made a significant contribution to the local economy and claimed to be the largest employer on the island with more than 1,500 employees.
The massive mining activity in the concession which has resources of 269 million tonnes has made the company the largest exporter of GAR’s 3,000 Kcal coal. The most recent data available says the company produced 4 million tonnes of coal in 2017-2018 and targets production of 5.5 million tonnes in 2018-2019.
(ha/ha)
