SE Asian rubber producers call for immediate meeting
SE Asian rubber producers call for immediate meeting
PHUKET, Thailand (Dow Jones): Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia have agreed to call for an immediate meeting of the Association of Natural Rubber Producing Countries (ANRPC) to discuss issues related to rubber producing countries' stand on the International Natural Rubber Organization (INRO), Thai and Malaysian senior agriculture officials said Saturday.
The ANRPC meeting will be held in "mid August" in Bangkok, the officials said.
The decision was made after the completion of the two-day ministerial meeting of Thailand, Malaysia, and Indonesia on INRO matters in Phuket, southern Thailand. The meeting started Friday. Thailand, Indonesia, and Malaysia are the world's top three natural rubber producers.
The coming ANRPC meeting will inform other rubber producing countries of Malaysia's inclination toward withdrawing from INRO, according to a press release from the Phuket meeting. Malaysia announced its intention to pull out of the rubber group during the meeting in Phuket.
The ANRPC meeting will also discuss "alternative strategies" that the rubber producing countries could adopt to rescue the currently weak rubber market, in light of INRO's scant support for the ailing industry in recent years, according to officials attending the meeting.
Thailand and Malaysia have threatened to leave the world rubber group after it failed to revise its market intervention measures at an INRO council meeting in April.
The Kuala Lumpur-based INRO seeks to mitigate wild price swings in the physical rubber markets.
Different views on whether to withdraw from INRO still remain among the three major rubber producing countries after the Phuket meeting, according to officials attending the event.
While Malaysia indicated its own decision to pull out from the rubber group, positions of Thailand and Indonesia are still unclear.
Thailand will wait for the results of the ANRPC meeting to decide its stand on INRO membership, said Sanit Samosorn, deputy director-general of the Thai Department of Agriculture, adding that Thailand's current position can be described as "neutral."
Indonesia said it is not in a position to support an INRO pull-out call but will study the matter carefully, according to officials at the meeting.
Lim Keng Yaik, Malaysia's Primary Industries Minister, said he had hoped that the three countries would decide to withdraw together from INRO at the meeting, but adding that he understands that the three have taken different stands because of their "different social, economic and political conditions."
The ministerial meeting in Phuket was attended by the two ministers from Thailand and Malaysia, with Indonesia only sending a senior official as an observer.