[Geofin Comtrade] Daily report on Natural Rubber: May 20, 2016

Natural rubber in the major overseas market stayed under pressure on worries over demand and on decline in other industrial commodities. However, as this week ends, TOCOM rubber futures are seen steadying near the two and a half month low. A similar move is being seen on SHFE as well, though it stayed on the negative turf. Weakness in the major overseas market coupled dampened the sentiments in the local markets as well, dragging down NMCE rubber futures on Thursday. However, in the spot market losses were limited probably owing to limited supplies and heavy rains in the major rubber growing areas in Kerala.

MARKET NEWS

JK Tyre & Industries Ltd has set up a trading arm in Singapore to facilitate natural rubber imports, its Chairman and Managing Director Raghupati Singhania said.

Natural rubber output from the world’s top producing countries will see a nominal rise of about 1.3% in the calendar year 2016 to 11.2 mln tn as a long phase of low prices has hurt planting of the cash crop, Sheela Thomas, secretary-general of the Association of Natural Rubber Producing Countries, said.

China’s rubber imports (both natural and synthetic) in April amounted to 500000 tonnes, down 7.4 percent from a month earlier.

An Action Taken Report (ATR) of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on commerce chaired by ChandanMitra has criticised the Centre for its indifferent attitude towards natural rubber (NR). The report says that the government has been indifferent to the woes of rubber farmers and permitted excess imports, delayed the national policy on rubber and kept key posts in the state-run Rubber Board vacant for more than two years.

According to a deputy chairman of the Rubber Holder Co-operatives Federation of Thailand,the production of natural rubber has fallen about 50% from January to April year-on-year due to the drought.

[embeddoc url=”https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BzrsaGiMYhEkbFZ5TzZvTFZQbVU/preview” viewer=”drive”]

Geofin Comtrade