Guarantee wanted

Guarantee wanted in rubber supply

SINGAPORE (AFP): As talks open in Geneva on a new natural rubber agreement, industry sources said yesterday they expect the European Union (EU) to press for assurances from producers that they will maintain future supply.

Western diplomats monitoring progress towards a new pact said the EU would ask producers to commit themselves to the principles of sustainable forestry development endorsed by the 1992 UN Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro.

Industry sources said that this amounted to asking producers to guarantee the future supply of the important industrial commodity and not fell existing rubber stands to replace them with other crops.

Rubber trees have a life span of 25 years after which they are cut down and the land replanted with new saplings.

But lower prices largely due to declining demand have resulted in producer countries replacing rubber acreage with crops like palm oil, particularly in countries like Malaysia.

The UN conference in Rio de Janeiro endorsed the practice of replanting every tree fell to avoid depletion of forestry resources.

Output in Malaysia once the world's biggest producer has dropped to about one million tons from 1.66 million tons in 1988.

Thailand, the current top producer, had a policy requiring planters to grow rubber trees on 50 percent of land earmarked for replanting until the beginning of the year, market sources said.