Indonesia holds the world’s largest tin reserves—roughly 1.4 million tonnes, or 23% of the global total—and ranks as the world’s largest exporter of refined tin, a critical mineral for solar panels, batteries, and semiconductors driving the global energy transition. Yet this strategic advantage has not translated into local prosperity. In CORE Indonesia’s latest research report, we assess the sustainability of the tin sector in Belitung and East Belitung using a five-pillar Green Industrial Policy (GIP) framework spanning economic value, labour justice, governance, environmental stewardship, and climate mitigation. The findings reveal a composite GIP score of just 0.34—meaning performance is low across all five pillars—exposing pervasive informality, weak local value capture, and an “enclave” development pattern in which extraction costs stay in the producing region while economic benefits flow elsewhere.
Drawing on household and business surveys, stakeholder interviews, field observations, and a system dynamics model projecting scenarios through 2060, the report shows that coordinated reform—formalizing artisanal mining, deepening domestic processing, and accelerating the clean-energy transition—could generate up to US$534 million in additional value added and around 8,680 new jobs by 2040, while keeping emissions in check. But because tin is finite, this window in the 2030s and 2040s must be used to diversify the regional economy before reserves run dry.
Read the full report to explore the data, the GIP scorecard, and the policy recommendation for a more sustainable and inclusive tin sector in attached below.
