Loading…
Loading…
Man Maw (also Mong Maw), located in Wa State Special Region No. 2 in southern Shan State, is the world's largest tin mine, accounting for approximately 10% of global mined tin concentrate supply. Wa State is administered by the United Wa State Army (UWSA), a de facto territorial government with approximately 30 years of administrative continuity over ~17,000 km² — legally distinct from Myanmar's central SAC government and from the KIO/Kachin Independence Organisation (which controls Kachin State further north).
Suspension phase (August 2023–2025). A comprehensive mining ban effective August 1, 2023 halted all extraction, excavation, and processing in Wa State ("until mature mining conditions are in place"). During the suspension, in February 2024, Wa State introduced a 30% tax-in-kind on all tin concentrate exports — establishing the fiscal architecture that would carry into the post-restart regime.
Restart regime (February 2025 onwards). Wa State's Economic Planning Commission issued formal instructions for new three-year mining, processing, and prospecting licence applications in February 2025. Operators were required to pay licensing fees upfront; companies completing payment received mining permits authorising extraction to restart. By April 2025 the process was underway, with Wa State simultaneously formalising a 5% first-batch concentrate levy to fund collective mine dewatering (underground workings required dewatering after two years of inactivity).
Tax-in-kind structure. The 30% tax-in-kind is universal — grade-agnostic and applied to physical output, not declared value. This gives Wa State direct control over approximately one-third of all tin concentrate produced, with the physical material available for state-directed sale. The additional 5% dewatering fee applies to each operator's first production batch. Effective total cost burden: 35% of gross concentrate output before any royalty or other levy.
February 2025 restart announcement brought partial relief, but the 35% levy keeps supply economics tighter than the pre-ban baseline.
Yunnan to Chinese smelters. The tax-in-kind directly affects Chinese smelter input costs and ex-works tin ingot pricing on global markets.
2025 ramp period, rising to ~1,300 t/month in November–December 2025 as dewatering progressed and production normalised. Full pre-suspension output levels not yet restored.
marginal cost of supply and widens the cost gap versus Indonesian, Australian, and Peruvian peers.
UWSA/Wa State operates as a de facto territorial government with its own Economic Planning Commission, Bureau of Industry and Mines, and customs/tax infrastructure. For IPTM §6 purposes, ITA (International Tin Association) is accepted as the best-available primary documentation source for Wa State regulatory notices, comparable to official texts that exist only in non-indexed local-language gazettes. The filing carries issuer_country: MM (the internationally-recognised sovereign territory) with the de facto issuer being the UWSA Special Region No. 2. The 2023 suspension that precedes this action will be filed separately.
application instructions.
production quotas, renewal conditions, community obligations).
complete, or is a permanent regime feature.
concentrate export remains unrestricted beyond the tax-in-kind levy.