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resident Joko '€œJokowi'€ Widodo has vowed to crack down on growing illegal tin mining activities in the country to ensure that the government will be able to control tin production more effectively.

Speaking during a limited Cabinet meeting on Thursday, Jokowi said that Indonesia, the world'€™s largest tin producer, could no longer control the global tin market because of the lack of supervision of illegal mining.

'€œTin prices have been low because of an oversupply, partly as a result of an increase in illegal tin exports from Bangka Belitung,'€ Jokowi said, adding that if the problem related to illegal miners could be resolved, Indonesia would be able to control the market more effectively.

Indonesia is the world'€™s largest exporter of tin, which is used for soldering transistors and chips in mobile phones, laptops, televisions and other electronic appliances.

The country'€™s tin producers have suffered hard from the plunging prices of the metal as a result of decreasing demand from China, its biggest tin purchaser. The tin price hovered at US$15,175 per ton on the London Metal Exchange on Thursday.

The price has declined more than 20 percent this year despite the cut in supply from Indonesia. In April, the country'€™s 22 tin producers, mostly located in Bangka Belitung, began capping exports at 4,500 tons per month, aiming to get prices to return to $23,000 per ton.

The export cap has failed to boost prices partly because of the increase in the supply from illegal miners.

Before the export cap, tin exports from Indonesia amounted to about 10,000 tons a month, Bangka Belitung Governor Rustam Effendi, whose province accounts for 90 percent of the country'€™s total tin output, said on Thursday after his meeting with the President.

Rustam acknowledged that an increase in tin production from illegal miners in his province had contributed to the oversupply. He said the unauthorized miners sold their tin production illegally to overseas buyers.

The Bangka Belitung regional government would undertake efforts to legalize the illegal miners, tighten their supervision, or even find ways so that well-established miners such as PT Timah could purchase the illegal production, the governor said.

'€œWe will legalize the miners and provide the required financial support so that they can operate legally as SMEs [small-and-medium enterprises],'€ Presidential chief of staff Luhut Panjaitan told reporters after the meeting,

'€œWe are committed to resolving this illegal mining issue, which has been going on for years.'€

Illegal miners could be partly responsible for piling up tin inventories in Indonesia, Stanley Liong, a metal analyst with Macquarie Group, wrote in a recent research note.

 He said the government'€™s continued initiatives to eradicate illegal mining should be positive for the sector, though short to mid-term headwinds still persisted as Myanmar boosted its tin ore exports supply to China, acting as a competitor for Indonesia.

David Wilson, a director for metal research and strategy with Citigroup in London, attributed the problem in Indonesia'€™s tin industry to decreasing import demand from China.

'€œIn the past, the Indonesian Tin Association was able to support prices by making announcements on restrictions to tin exports, now such announcements have little impact due to the changing nature of China'€™s import demand,'€ he told The Jakarta Post via email on Thursday.

'€œWhat this means is that Indonesia has effectively lost its pricing power.'€