Rubber Board looking at group approach to raise output

The Rubber Board is trying to promote a group approach in rubber production and marketing, its Chairperson, Ms Sheela Thomas, said.

“Enhancing productivity of rubber plantations through systematic replanting, accelerating new planting with focus on non-traditional rubber growing regions, intensifying research to evolve appropriate technologies for rubber cultivation and maximising net returns of rubber growers with focus on environmental sustainability and group approach would be our major focus in the Twelfth Plan,” she said, at the Commodity Outlook session on Rubber, at the 118th Annual Conference of UPASI.

Capturing a couple of recent developments, she said the Board has initiated branding of natural rubber for export in February and so far 31 exporters have inked an agreement for this and more than 4,000 tonnes were exported.

GM trials

The Genetic Engineering Approval Committee has granted permission for limited scale field trial of GM rubber plants (one acre each in the research farms of RRII in Kerala and Maharashtra) and the Board has sought permission from the respective State Governments for field planting.

Further, the RRII, in collaboration with ISRO and IIT Kharagpur, is in the process of identifying potential areas for expanding rubber cultivation with least pressure on forest and food crops cultivated lands, she added.

Reverting to the natural rubber production scenario, she said, “India continued to occupy the fourth position, registering 3.7 per cent growth over 2009 at 8.51 lakh tonnes.

“The 2011-12 production has been estimated at 9.02 lakh tonnes against 8.62 lakh tonnes in 2010-11. Indonesia, however, registered a substantial increase in NR production and the farm gate price also shot up as Thailand's output did not increase on expected lines.

“While climatic conditions proved favourable in Indonesia, India maintained its premier position irrespective of sub-optimal agro climatic conditions,” she added.

The consumption is also is expected to increase to 9.77 lakh tonnes compared with 9.48 lakh tonnes last year.

“While the consumption-production numbers reflect a deficit of 75,000 tonnes in 2011-12, there is no shortage as the opening stock in April 2011 was 2.88 lakh tonnes (2.11 lakh tonnes).”

Bullish sentiment

“There is tremendous potential for increasing the consumption of natural rubber, and this is despite concerns on global economic recovery and increased synthetic rubber capacity in China,” Ms Thomas said, adding that the NR consumption in the tyre sector grew by 5.4 per cent during the first half of the current fiscal as compared to a decline of 5.4 per cent in non-tyre sector.

Her observation on the huge potential for increasing rubber consumption is based on the 15.5 per cent increase in the world NR consumption in 2010 over the previous year.

“The world production of vehicles increased by 26.5 per cent in 2010 compared with a 11.2 per cent decline in 2009 and the production of tyres was up 17.5 per cent in 2010 compared to the decline of 4.5 per cent in 2009.

“Rubber prices have risen in the last couple of days but this cannot be taken for granted as there is downward pressure on NR prices due to decline in consumption in China and Malaysia, decline in oil prices, and strengthening of Japanese Yen,” she said.