RI expected to stabilize tin market
JAKARTA (JP): Indonesia can function as a stabilizer for the world tin market by increasing its output while production in Thailand and Malaysia is decreasing.
"As the world's biggest tin exporter, Indonesia has a very important role in stabilizing the tin market through its involvement in the Association of Tin Producing Countries (ATPC)," David S. Ratcliffe, managing director of the Phuket- based Thailand Smelting and Refining Co. Ltd., told The Jakarta Post here yesterday.
Ratcliffe is here to participate in the third worldwide conference on tin, held by the London-based Metal Bulletin at the Borobudur Inter-Continental Hotel here.
The two-day conference, which was opened yesterday by the Secretary-General of the Ministry of Mines and Energy, Umar Said, is attended by some 75 executives from ATPC members and tin consuming countries, including Britain, Japan, South Korea, the United States, Denmark, Italy, Vietnam, Belgium, Brazil, Poland and the Netherlands.
Indonesia and other large tin producers like China and Brazil, are in a strong position to push ATPC members toward keeping equilibrium in the supply and demand on the world market, Ratcliffe said.
Gonzalo Martinez Alvarez, director of Corporacion Minera de Bolivia, said that oversupply has partly caused the lethargic trading on the world market in the last few years.
He said, however, that tin prices are now at a level favorable to producers.
Price
Director General of Mines Kuntoro Mangkusubroto told reporters in a break at yesterday's conference session that Indonesia is committed to keeping tin prices above $4,000 per ton, but no higher than $6,000 per metric ton.
He said if the price increases to $6,000 per ton, consumers will shift to substitute materials, such as plastics and fiber glass.
"The tin price is now in an ideal level of between $5,400 and $5,600 per ton," Kuntoro said.
Last September, the tin price dropped to its lowest level of $4,000 per ton, he said.
Kuntoro was optimistic that the market will be stable for a long time due to the joint commitment of ATPC members to limiting their production.
"Indonesia's ceiling of production is 30,500 tons per annum," he said.
ATPC, grouping Australia, Bolivia, Indonesia, Malaysia, Nigeria, Thailand and Zaire, supplies 67 percent of the world's demand of about 170,000 tons a year. (fhp)