MARKET COMMENTARY
Natural rubber is taking a breather after the recent slide in the major overseas market. On Wednesday, TOCOM rubber futures, after four consecutive sessions of losses, bounced up from the one month lows probably on bargain buying and firm crude oil prices. However, persisting worries over demand from the top natural rubber consumer China continued to hamper the overall market sentiments. SHFE rubber futures are seen rising as well. In the Indian market, meanwhile, natural rubber firmed up. In the physical market, RSS4 rubber was quoted around Rs.102.50 a kg while on NMCE it ended marginally up, by about 0.5 per cent.
MARKET NEWS
Thailand’s Bank for Agriculture and Agricultural Cooperatives will lend another 5 billion baht to rubber farmers seeking to do extra jobs during the ongoing price slump.
Rubber inventories in the warehouses monitored by SHFE rose 2.4 per cent to 240189 tonnes last Friday from a week earlier.
New plantings of rubber have been on a decline over the last three years and were down around 19% in 2014-15 (Apr-Mar), the Ministry of Commerce and Industry said.The total area under newly planted and replanted rubber trees was at 32,000 ha in 2014-15, down 11.1% from 36,000 ha a year ago.
India’s natural rubber production in November declined 16.7 percent to 50000tonnes according to the data from the Rubber Board. Imports declined as well by 13.7 per cent to 37445 tonnes.
Thailand on Tuesday approved $139 million in additional loans to help rubber farmers in the Southeast Asian country hit by weak global prices of the commodity.
Following the meeting of International Rubber Tripartite Council, officials have pledged to establish a new regional rubber trading platform that could be up and running by June 2016. Also, it has asked upon to implement a scheme in 2016 that would limit rubber supplied to market.
[embeddoc url=”https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BzrsaGiMYhEkZlVHUlE0VHBzSnc/preview” viewer=”drive”]
Geofin Comtrade
