International Business News – Comprehensive Thai media recently reported that Thailand’s rubber exports ranked first in the world in the first half of 2022. The Rubber Authority of Thailand reported that from January to June this year, the export volume of natural rubber and rubber products reached 2.19 million tons with a total value of 24 million baht, and China is the top importer of Thai rubber, accounting for 49% of total exports; followed by Malaysia 10%, the United States 7%, Japan 6% and South Korea 4%.
Regarding the development of new markets, the Ministry of Agriculture and Cooperatives intends to strengthen the following six measures:
1.Active communication measures, such as the production of digital media for dissemination in international markets; 2. Active marketing measures to emphasize rubber products and the needs of partner countries, such as the increased demand for bicycle and bus tires in EU countries and the EU ban on Russian rubber products or the Russian moratorium on rubber products imported from the EU; 3. Measures to improve competitiveness by adopting sustainable agricultural methods, sustainable rubber plantations and traceability systems (traceability) to comply with the theme of environment, climate change, as this is a concern for many European countries; 4. Quarterly short-term measures to manage the annual production season based on the joint discussion between the Rubber Authority of Thailand, the private sector and the agricultural sector to develop measures; 5. Measures for high value-added rubber products, with emphasis on research and innovation, such as construction materials for houses and medical products, and transportation equipment to increase the income of rubber farmers, and the Rubber and Traders Association has put the research results into practice through the cooperation of the Rubber Authority of Thailand, the Agricultural Technology and Innovation Center; 6. Market mechanism measures such as supply and demand management, futures market mechanism for actual delivery and online rubber system auction system, which is an open system to increase domestic and foreign buyers and solve the problem of pricing by a few buyers or price manipulation or monopoly problems.
The Thai government intends to use innovation to develop rubber products to increase their added value and develop markets.
For actions to stabilize rubber prices, the Ministry of Agriculture and Cooperatives intends to support prices through the Rubber Authority of Thailand and intervene to set prices for raw and smoked rubber chips in the auction market, bid in the futures market for smoked rubber chips, etc. As for the Rubber Farmers’ Income Guarantee Program, which guarantees a minimum income for 1.46 million rubber farmers, however, the budget to cover the rubber price difference has been reduced in the three years since the program was implemented, indicating that rubber prices have shown better levels and sometimes the market price is higher than the guaranteed price, thus saving the government budget.