Ongoing US-China trade war impacting natural rubber prices
Global demand for natural rubber outstripped supply by 874,000 metric tons throughout the the nine month period ending Sept. 30, the Association of Natural Rubber Producing Countries reported.
While worldwide production grew at 1.5 pecent year-on-year to 9.8 million tons, consumption grew by only 6.6 percent to 10.7 millions tons, according to the ANRPC's latest Natural Rubber Trends & Statistics.
However, the changed supply/demand balance did not benefit suppliers, as physical rubber prices remained low, the association's secretary-general Nguyen Ngoc Bich said in a statment.
"The high inventory in the Shanghai Rubber Exchange and the warehouses in Qingdao Free Trade zone and other external factors have kept the sentiments down in natural market," he said.
Despite some signs of recovery around mid-September 2018, the ANRPC leader pointed to concerns about a slowdown in the Chinese economy due to the on-going US-China trade-war.
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