RI expected to stabilize tin market

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)