London 13/01/2016 - This year's exports of tin from Indonesia should equal 70,154 tonnes, the six-year low set in 2015, the Indonesian Association of Tin Producers' (AETI) president, Jabin Sufianto, told FastMarkets.
"I'm predicting 2016 volumes to be similar to 2015," Sufianto said.
National and local governments introduced new regulations in 2015 with the intention of making the smelting of tin in Indonesia, the world's largest refined tin exporting country, more transparent and auditable.
This pressured exports down 7.6 percent year on year to their lowest since 2003, according to preliminary data from the Ministry of Trade.
Smelters must now abide by Clean and Clear regulation to trade tin on the Indonesia Commodities and Derivatives Exchange (ICDX), a prerequisite for export.
As well, smelters also need a PE certificate, which provides the government with an auditable trail of tin production from a company's owned mining concessions and sources of concentrate to the final amount of refined tin produced.
But Indonesian producers have also since December had to ensure they have another permit, linked to PE, called RKAB 2016 as well as a requirement for shipping metal as of January 1 this year.
Issued by the regional government of Banka-Belitung, the two islands where the vast majority of Indonesian tin is mined and refined, the form sets out the amount of tin a smelter is due to export. This is important to prevent smelters from buying tin concentrates from illegal, unregistered mining operations.
"RKAB is your working plan for the year with approval at provincial level," a tin smelting source in the province said. "It contains your mining reserve, method of mining, heavy equipment use and costs of production."
Accordingly, RKAB lays out the volume that smelters in the country can produce and ship, making it easier for the government to control exports.
"You cannot export more than your quota and I believe that the purpose of the RKAB and PE is to limit us," a second smelter source in Indonesia said.
The Indonesian government has previously attempted to use the country's position as the world's biggest exporter of tin to boost prices, which dropped to a low of $13,140 per tonne on the LME yesterday, its lowest since July 2009.
(Editing by Mark Shaw)