Rubber exports approach $100 million January-April

Rubber exports approach $100 million January-April

Cambodia exported $99.87 million of natural rubber from January to April this year, according to the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries.

In total, 61,056 tonnes of natural rubber were exported over the four months. Rubber export revenues increased by 2.5 percent over the same period in 2020 ($97.43 million) according to the ministry.

A recent MAFF report noted that prices for Cambodian rubber have been about $1,584 per tonne in 2021. This price is significantly below the World Bank’s April Commodity Markets Outlook report, which reported that the global price of rubber had increased from $1.73 in 2020/kilogramme (kg) to $2.25/kg in 2021. The World Bank projects that the global price of rubber will rise incrementally to $2.30/kg by 2035.

In 2019, Cambodia exported $242 million of rubber, of which 67.5 percent was shipped to Vietnam, according to the Observatory of Economic Complexity (OEC).

Other leading importers of Cambodian rubber included Malaysia (11.6 percent), India (6.26 percent), China (6.08 percent), Singapore (3.14 percent) and South Korea (3 percent).

Rubber accounted for 0.88 percent of all Cambodian exports products in 2019, the last data set available from the OEC.

Exports of the commodity have varied since 2014, when it was valued at slightly over $140 million, according to the United Nations COMTRADE database on international trade.

In 2015,Cambodian rubber exports reached $160 million. By 2017, they increased to close to $260 million before retreating to about $222 million in 2018. Recently, agriculture producers in the Kingdom have been shifting away from rubber cultivation as farmers shift to meeting Chinese demand for bananas and other produce.

Last July, Pol Sopha, the director-general of the General Directorate of Rubber, told local media that there was indeed a shift away from rubber cultivation among the Kingdom’s farmers but that production levels would remain stable. Khmer Times