Illegal Tin Trade Carried Out Between Islands
Wednesday, 22 November, 2006 | 17:08 WIB

TEMPO Interactive, Jakarta: The government has pointed out that the illegal tin trade to foreign countries in being carried out between islands.

“Its pattern is like the inter-island sugar trade. But, the instruments and how to handle are is still being discussed. So, it will not be easy for people to carry them (tin ores outside of Java),” said Director General of Domestic Trade Ardiansyah Parman yesterday (11/21) in Jakarta.

As reported, the Department of Trade has planned to control exported tin ingots by only issuing export permits only to the registered exporters.

The reason is that the export ban on tin sand has been manipulated by illegal miners by transforming the tin sand into tin ingots (Koran Tempo, November 21).

Ardiansyah explained that so far the Department of Trade has only managed inter-islands trade system for one commodity, sugar.

This was intended to prevent imported sugar from entering the free market.

With this system, sugar can only be moved from one island to another island if there is sufficient demand on the destination island.

By virtue of this method, Ardiansyah stated that the department was preparing the draft of a regulation to restrict inter-island trade as regards tin ore.

The idea to limit inter-island trade, he said, actually emerged in a meeting concerning smuggling at the Coordinating Minister for Political, Legal and Security Affairs' office some time ago.

RR ARIYANI