Government plans to limit refined tin exports

Government plans to limit refined tin exports next year because of quality problems, a senior Trade Ministry official said yesterday.

?Unchecked tin exports have damaged Indonesia's tin quality. We have finished the draft and we will issue the export regulation in 2007,? Diah Maulida, director-general of foreign trade, told reporters.

?Because of unchecked exports, Indonesia's tin quality is not good. Most of (the exports) are shipped to Singapore where it will be processed into refined tin with minimum purity of 99.85% as required by the London Metal Exchange,? she was quoted as saying by Reuters

Maulida said that in the future only tin smelters with mining permits would be allowed to export refined tin, and it would have to be at a minimum purity of 99.85% before leaving Indonesia.

Indonesia would set up a Jakarta tin market to improve the value added by the national tin industry, Maulida said. (*)