by AMIR AZLAN / pic by BERNAMA

NATURAL rubber (NR) production declined by 11.7% in August 2021 (42,942 tonnes) as compared to July (48,610 tonnes), according to the Department of Statistic Malaysia (DOSM).

Chief Statistician Datuk Seri Dr Mohd Uzir Mahidin said on an annual basis, the production also decreased by 3.6% as against 44,543 tonnes in the same month of the previous year.

“Production of NR in Malaysia was mainly contributed by the smallholders sector (90.9%) as compared to the estates sector (9.1%),” he said in a statement today.

Uzir added that the stocks of NR showed an increase of 2.3% in August 2021 to 287,380 tonnes in comparison to 280,844 tonnes in July 2021 as rubber processing factories contributed 91.5% of the stocks followed by rubber consumers factory 8.4% and rubber estates 0.1%.

However, exports of the NR had shown an increase amounting to 59,172 tonnes (21.6%) in August in comparison to July 2021 (48,645 tonnes).

“China continued to dominate as the highest importer of NR with 43.7% from total exports in August 2021 followed by the United States of America (9.0%), France (8.4%), Turkey (3.1%) and Brazil (2.4%),” he said.

The performance at the national level was contributed by natural rubber-based products such as gloves, tyre, tube, rubber thread and condom.

“Gloves were the main exports of rubber-based products with a value of RM3.8 billion in August 2021, a decrease of 1.4% as compared to July 2021 (RM3.9 billion).”

The comparison of the average monthly price scenario showed that Latex Concentrated recorded an increase of 5.6% in August with  522.13 sen per kg against July 2021 (494.38 sen per kg), and for  Scrap 7.7% in August at 590.42 sen per kg compared to July 2021 (548.25 sen per kg).

A similar trend is also observed for all Standard Malaysian Rubber (S.M.R) which increased between 5.5 and 5.7% as S.M.R. 20 recorded the highest increase of 5.7% in August 2021 at 717.65 sen per kg against July 2021 (678.69 sen per kg).

The movement of global prices as reported by World Bank Commodity Price Data also showed the prices for Technically Specified Rubber (TSR) 20 increased 4.6% from USD1.63 kg to USD1.71 per kg and SGP/MYS 1.8% hike from USD1.87 per kg to USD1.90 per kg.