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Sunday, 1 November 2009

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Rubber prices improve

Rubber sector is recovering and auction prices are picking up, said Director Rubber Research Institute (RRI) Dr. Ashoka Nugawela. At the September auctions CR-1 grade fetched over Rs. 300/PerKg he said.

He said, that the brokers complain that the supply is still low and therefore the demand cannot be met. Dr. Nugawela highlighted several issues that adversely affect the sector at this moment.

He said that the bulk of our rubber production is RSS grade and it accounts for 48% of the total production. Although RSS-1 grade always has a high demand and fetches a high price, our growers do not produce RSS1 grade. Most of the products are low quality RSS rubber and it fetches a low price at the auction.

This is harmful to the farmers economy as well as for our export income, he said.

There are several issues that hinder the production of high quality rubber. Firstly, the traditional method used to produce RSS grade needs a change. Secondly, the farmers have no interest to produce RSS1 spending a large sum of money because the buyers, at the farm gate, do not pay a better price for high quality products.

To address these issues RRI proposes to organise growers at village level, Rubber Growers Societies, set up modern processing centres for each society and market the products direct to the exporters.

Dr. Nugawela said that this method has been successfully implemented in India. There is one such growers society in the Kegalle district and it is functioning successfully. The potential is there and farmers can get the support from Rubber Development Department and Thurusaviya to set up growers societies, he said.

Dr. Nugawela said that there is a high demand for centrifuged latex and therefore growers are now selling raw latex.

However, in two ways farmers earn losses by selling raw latex. Firstly the measurement of weight is not measured correctly, due to this farmers do not get the correct price. Secondly the growers do not get the RSS1 price by selling raw latex. Therefore, this is not profitable for the growers, he said.

GW

 

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