THE TIN INDUSTRY SINCE THE COLLAPSE OF THE INTERNATIONAL TIN AGREEMENT

After the sharp fall in the price of tin in the 1980s, intensified by the collapse of the International Tin Agreement, the world tin mining industry has been restructuring. The long established tin exporting industries of South-east Asia, used to earning high mineral rents, have been struggling for survival, while Brazil has emerged as a dominant low cost producer. Sales from Brazil and from China have done much to make ineffective the supply rationalization efforts of the Association of Tin Producing Countries, and a recovery of tin consumption in industrialized and developing countries has been partially counteracted by falls in import demand by Eastern Europe. Most mining multinationals have left the industry, and the state owned mining enterprises in Indonesia and Bolivia are being reorganized.