Press Release
Subject: Anticipated World Supply and Demand for Natural Rubber During 2017
The Association of Natural Rubber Producing Countries (ANRPC) from April 2017 onwards reports statistics and forecasts of supply and demand for natural rubber covering the entire world. This is a marked improvement from the earlier practice of reporting figures confining to its member countries only. ANRPC on May 12, 2017, released the improved version of its monthly “Natural Rubber Trends & Statistics” by giving the world supply and demand which include non-ANRPC countries as well.
Based on preliminary estimates, world supply during the four months ended April 2017 was 466,000 tonnes short of demand. As shown in the following table, the shortfall in world supply is anticipated to widen to 688,000 tonnes by the end of June 2017 before narrowing down to 504,000 tonnes by September 2017 and 46,000 tonnes by end of the year.
Anticipated Shortfall in World Supply of Natural Rubber during 2017
| Period | World Supply (‘000 tonnes) |
World Demand (‘000 tonnes) |
Short fall in Supply (‘000 tonnes) |
| January to April 2017 | 3,714 | 4,180 | 466 |
| January to June 2017 | 5,701 | 6,389 | 688 |
| January to September 2017 | 9,143 | 9,647 | 504 |
| January to December 2017 | 12,771 | 12,817 | 46 |
Data and forecasts reported by ANRPC through its monthly “Natural Rubber Trends & Statistics” until March 2017 covered its 11 member countries only. They covered only 90% of the world supply and 65% of the world demand. ANRPC noticed that some among the media had wrongly reported the figures as aggregate for the whole world and even worked out global surplus based on those figures, giving misleading information and causing confusion among market players. To guard against this issue, and on consideration of requests from players in the market, it has been decided to make the figures comprehensive of the whole world by incorporating non-ANRPC countries from April 2017 onwards.
Government of Vietnam will host the 40th session of assembly of member nations of ANRPC, in Ho Chi Minh City on October 27, 2017. The Tenth ANRPC Annual Rubber Conference will be held at the same venue on October 23. The ANRPC Public-Private Meet and meetings of the Executive Committee and two technical committees will also be held during the same week at Ho Chi Minh City.
To review the latest developments in rubber prices and identify suitable new measures, ANRPC is convening a meeting of its Expert Group on Natural Rubber Price at Hat Yai, Thailand, from 23 to 25 May 2017. Dr. Titus Suksaard, Governor, Rubber Authority of Thailand will inaugurate the meeting to be hosted by the Government of Thailand and attended by designated experts from 11 member governments. This is the fourth meeting of the Expert Group which was constituted in October 2015 to identify suitable measures for mitigating the adverse impact of low rubber prices.
Dr. Nguyen Ngoc Bich
Secretary-General
