[Geofin Comtrade] Daily report on Natural Rubber: May 24, 2016

MARKET COMMENTARY

TOCOM rubber futures are seen taking a breather after the recent slide while, SHFE rubber stretched losses on Tuesday. The benchmark October rubbers on TOCOM hit a three month low before paring losses. Concerns over demand from the top natural rubber consumer China and softer oil prices weighed on. In the meantime, natural rubber in the local market showed a mixed trend on Monday. While the commodity traded firm in the spot market, declines were witnessed on NMCE. Limited arrivals to the market probably lend firm support though weakness in overseas market weighed on.

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.

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Geofin Comtrade