Roundup: Thai rubber planters urge gov't to boost domestic price

Rubber planters in southern Thailand are urging the military-led government to take action to bolster the drastically-lowered price of rubber.

The government is suggested to intervene the domestic rubber market to promptly boost the average price of rubber which is currently selling for only 69 U.S. cents per kilogram - the lowest in 10 years - to up to a range of 1.6 U.S. dollars a kilogram, Boonsong Nabtong, leader of the Rubber Planters Federation of Thailand said on Tuesday.

That compared to an average of 1.1 U.S. dollars for a kilogram of rubber in the domestic market a few months earlier.

Member planters of the federation and other groups of rubber planters, mostly in the southern region of the country, will meet next Tuesday to consider taking steps in pursuit of a substantial increase in the domestic rubber price, which is feared to plummet further, he said.

For the time being, the rubber planters are pressing the government not only to intervene the market to boost the price but to call on other rubber-producing countries namely Malaysia, Indonesia, Laos and Vietnam not to mutually undercut the rubber prices in the global market.

With an annual production of an estimated four million tons of rubber, Thailand is one of the world's largest rubber exporters besides Malaysia and Indonesia.

Of that total, only about 10 percent is currently consumed within the country while the rest is for export, mostly to China.

"The fact that the government is still keeping as much as 400,000 tons of rubber in stock with no signs of releasing it to the world market in foreseeable future merely pushes the price down. It's time the government take steps to raise the price now otherwise the rubber planters who are already at critical loss will finally go out of business," said the rubber federation's leader.

Thai Premier Prayut Chan-o-cha earlier called on the southern rubber planters to consider growing some other plants as alternative to avoid oversupplying their product to the global market in the face of its chronic price slumps.

He instructed government units to promote extensive uses of rubber particularly in construction projects such as those of the Highway Department which may call for the mixture between rubber and asphalt in the paving of roads throughout the country and the increased manufacturing of tires in automobile industry, among others.

The rubber federation's leader contended that the current government subsidy for the rubber planters is not enough for them to make ends meet and recommended that the government intervene the domestic market to bolster the price.

The government, which is currently providing 41.6 U.S. dollars in subsidy for every 0.4 acre of rubber plantation nationwide, claimed such grant was merely designed to help curtail the producing costs of the planters who claimed to spend up to 1.8 U.S. dollars for a kilogram of their rubber. Enditem