Govt to crack down on illegal miners

The government plans to take action against illegal mining of gold, coal, tin and other minerals because such activities have caused great losses to the state and also damaged the environment, Coordinating Minister for the Economy Aburizal Bakrie said in Batam on Sunday.

Illegal mining explorations had increased sharply in the past five years while no legal ones had been carried out so far, Bakrie told the Antara news agency when launching the initial export of tin produced by PT Timah Tbk's smelter unit in Kundur, Kariumun, Riau.

The minister said regional administrations could now also issue mining licenses besides the central government in line with the implementation of regional autonomy.

He also appealed to regional administrations to tighten the issuance of licenses. He said requirements must be standardized so that no one would feel being discriminated against.

He said the government would not act against mining plants that had received a license.

He said many big-scale tin miners had been operating without a license, besides PT Timah Tbk and PT Koba Tin, two big tin miners with a license issued by the central administration.

Meanwhile he said that 20 smelters were now operating in Bangka island using a license issued by the regional administration.

He said these smelters produced an average of 5,000 tons a month of unbranded, cheap and low quality solid tin which they sold directly to Singapore.

The president director of PT Timah, Thobrani Alwi, said tin businessmen began selling unbranded tin directly to the buyers after the trade minister banned exports of tin ore in July 2002.

He said the activity had harmed PT Timah and PT Koba Tin because it increased the world's supply and affected the price of the commodity on the international market.

PT Timah is the world's biggest tin producer with a capacity of producing up to 45,000 metric tons a year or 16 percent of the world's market share.

The new smelter in Kundur will produce 7,000 metric tons a year and the company to controlled 20 percent world's tin market share.(*)