Nickel made Indonesia the world's fifth-biggest iron and steel exporter

Claim types Estimate · Interpretation

Harvard Growth Lab, Atlas of Economic Complexity, goods exports in current US$, HS 1992. UN Comtrade reporter data cleaned and reconciled by the Growth Lab with mirror flows (Bustos-Yildirim method): every value is an Estimate. Read on the Atlas's own GraphQL API (atlas.hks.harvard.edu/api/graphql; HS2 product-HS92-171 = chapter 72 Iron and steel; Indonesia = country-360), and cross-checked with the progrss vault, which loads the Growth Lab's own file hs92_country_product_year_2.csv (Harvard Dataverse doi:10.7910/DVN/T4CHWJ, v18.0, released 22 Apr 2026). 2010 values are identical in both; 2024 values differ by under 1% (vault file: Indonesia 24.40, Japan 27.01, China 68.93, Germany 26.35, Korea 24.81, US 20.17, Russia 10.55, India 9.93; ranks of the eight charted countries unchanged). Chart values (API), US$ bn, 2010 -> 2024: Japan 38.32 -> 26.94; China 29.55 -> 68.91; Germany 27.19 -> 26.31; Korea 21.68 -> 24.73; US 18.76 -> 20.05; Russia 17.15 -> 10.56; India 7.23 -> 10.05; Indonesia 1.238 -> 24.195. World ranks among all countries in the API response: Indonesia 39th in 2010 (38 countries higher), 5th in 2024 (and 5th in 2022, its peak year, US$26.78bn; 2024 is 10% below that peak). Indonesia 2024 by HS4 (API, product level 4; sums to 24.195): 7202 ferro-alloys 12.81, of which HS6 720260 ferro-nickel 12.80 (Indonesia reports nickel pig iron under ferro-nickel); stainless steel 7218-7223 7.83 (7219 flat-rolled 5.58, 7218 ingots 2.21); 7207 semi-finished non-alloy steel 2.00; 7208 hot-rolled flat 0.57; 7213 bars 0.39; 7201 pig iron 0.28; rest 0.33. 2010: 7202 ferro-alloys 0.47 of 1.24 (38%). Nickel ore (2604): US$538.6m in 2010, US$0.67m in 2024. Derived by progrss: 24.195 / 1.238 = 19.5x; 12.81 (HS 7202) / 24.195 = 52.9%; 7.83 / 24.195 = 32.4%; ranks. The chart plots values; world ranks are among all countries in the API response. 'Nickel now leaves as metal' is an interpretation of the ore vs ferro-nickel figures (Indonesia banned raw nickel ore exports from 2020; not read on a primary page here). Most Indonesian ferro-nickel feeds stainless steel mills, not batteries. Related plate 011 (Indonesia mines two-thirds of the world's nickel) covers mining; this plate covers processed-metal exports. Licence: CC0 1.0 (public domain) per the Harvard Dataverse record doi:10.7910/DVN/T4CHWJ; credit The Growth Lab at Harvard University.