JAKARTA: The Bangka Belitung Province Governor Rustam Effendi said that the producers will meet soon to discuss cut short in the shipments process, for reversing and recovering a fall in prices of tin, which accounts for about 90 percent of country’s exports.
Officials from Bangka, which accounts for about 90 percent of the country’s tin output, will meet producers soon to discuss a stoppage, Effendi told reporters in Pangkalpinang today. The smelters last halted shipments to reverse a slump in prices in the final quarter of 2011.
Tin slumped 9 percent on the London Metal Exchange this year as supplies increased even after Indonesia tightened rules on exports. The glut will persist through 2016, with rising shipments from Myanmar and elsewhere thwarting Indonesia’s efforts to raise prices, according to Macquarie Group Ltd. The producers have yet to receive an invitation from Effendi for talks, the Association of Indonesian Tin Exporters said.
“A moratorium like that needs cooperation from all smelters,” Jabin Sufianto, chairman of the association, said in a mobile phone text message today.
“With tighter checking on the origin of the goods and more attention to tin trading regulations, export volumes should decline automatically.”
Indonesia toughened rules on tin trading last year to boost exports of higher-value products and challenge the role of the London Metal Exchange as a price setter, while smelters restrained sales in an attempt to counter declining prices. New standards for packaging, labeling, size and shape of exports were implemented from Nov. 1 to further tighten controls.
