Following a meeting held on Monday evening with Bangka Belitung Governor Eko Maulana Ali, all Indonesian producers have said that they will halt exports from 1 October in order to support tin prices. Exports will resume if the price recovers to $25,000/tonne, Johan Murod, director at PT Bangka Belitung Timah Sejahtera, a group of six private smelters, told Bloomberg. According to Murod 28 companies – including PT Timah, the biggest producer, and Malaysia Smelting Corporation’s 75%-owned subsidiary PT Koba Tin – agreed on the export halt. “We feel that the export ban is the best instrument at the moment that may effectively help boost prices. This is an effort to help the tin industry as well as the traditional miners.” Bangka Belitung’s governor will issue a decree as a legal basis for the export-halt, Rudy Irawan, deputy chairman of the Indonesian Tin Industry Association, said. PT Bangka Belitung Timah Sejahtera had to stop buying ore and halted production last week as no miners were willing to sell, Murod told Bloomberg.
State-owned tin firm Timah , which attended the meeting on Monday night, agreed to suspend shipping of tin ingot to buyers, Reuters reported. “PT Timah is giving full support to the agreed decision to temporarily halt tin exports, until its price in the market returns to a normal level,” the firm’s chief executive, Wachid Usman, said after the meeting. “The fall in global tin ingot prices was caused by negative sentiment in the market due to the crisis in Europe,” Usman said. Global demand for metals has not declined so there is no reason for the price to fall, he said. He said the ban would be lifted only if tin prices reached between $23,000 and $24,000 per metric tonne.
Indonesia is by far the world’s largest tin exporter. Provisional trade ministry data shows that the tonnage of tin exported had risen by 13% year-on-year to 67,990 tonnes in January-August this year. The Governor organised a similar joint plan to halt production and exports in October 2008 in response to slumping prices during the last global financial crisis. At that time all Indonesian private smelters, which account for about half of the country’s tin metal production, halted sales until the following January, reducing exports in November-December 2008 to some 4,000 tpm. Last month trade ministry data indicated exports of over 8,500 tonnes.
