Indonesia is reviewing any potential negative impact from a plan to restrict exports of tin ingot, a government official said on Tuesday, including the possibility of introducing it in phases.
Indonesia, the world’s biggest exporter of refined tin, is planning to ban shipments of tin ingot to create further processing at home, President Joko Widodo said last year.
The resource-rich country is set to ban exports of all unprocessed metal ore in June 2023 to develop processing facilities at home. Indonesia exports refined tin currently, but intends to produce other products from tin domestically.
Ridwan Djamaluddin, a senior official at the Energy and Mineral Resources Ministry, said authorities were doing systematic preparation to avoid any negative fallout of the tin export restrictions.
“Currently only 5% of the production can be absorbed by domestic market, we are reviewing how to mitigate the negative impacts,” he said.
He said authorities were considering imposing the export ban in stages until the domestic downstream facilities were available. He did not provide a timeline.
