Saturday, December 5, 2015

Demand to regulate rubber imports


The persistent fall in the prices in the past two years had caused concern among rubber growers in Kerala. Kerala government has asked Centre to regulate import of natural rubber and hike excise duty to check its falling prices in domestic market. Recently, Kerala government had introduced a support scheme whereby small-scale rubber growers would get an assured price of `.150 per kg. The State government's commitment towards this scheme would come to around `.300 crore in the current fiscal and it would go up to `.500 crore next year.

The problem of low-cost imports is putting at risk the entire ‘Make in India’ clarion call by the Indian government. According to Mohinder Gupta, president of All India Rubber Industries Association, much higher import duties on raw materials such as natural and synthetic rubbers than on finished rubber goods have impacted the export competitiveness of the rubber sector in India. Import duty should be zero for the rubber and raw materials not being manufactured in the country. The proposed national rubber policy is still a work-in-progress. The meetings of the working group formed for framing national rubber policy are over. Different stakeholders have made their submissions. We have requested the government to come out with the policy as soon as possible.

Through bilateral friendly consultations in Thailand, Sinochem and Rubber Authority of Thailand (RAOT) signed a purchase agreement of 200,000 tonnes of natural rubber, which is the largest order in 2015.

The benchmark RSS4 grade rubber closed at `.105 a kg at Kottayam, while RSS3 grade closed at `.85.34 a kg at Bangkok and Malaysian SMR20 closed at `.77.97 a kg. On National Multi Commodity Exchange December 2015 futures closed at `.105.38 a kg, January 2016 at `.105.49 and February closed at `.106.16 a kg. On Tokyo Commodity Exchange, December 2015 futures series closed at ¥161.8 a kg, January 2016 at ¥165.1, February at ¥167.3, March at ¥169, April at ¥169.8 and the contract for delivery in May 2016 closed at ¥170.7 a kg.

To read Rubber4U – 15th December 2015 issue: http://rubber4u.com/Public/Abcd.pdf
For 2015-16 Rubber Forecast: http://rubber4u.com/Public/RForecast.pdf
Visit Us at Rubber World Expo 2015 at B-34, BEC, Goregaon-Mumbai, India.

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