KUALA LUMPUR, Maaysia—Natural rubber-growing countries are becoming increasingly anxious over the Eurozone debt crisis and what it will do to NR demand, the Association of Natural Rubber Producing Countries said.
ANRPC members are curtailing their growth projections after an optimistic first quarter of 2012, according to a letter from ANRPC Secretary-General Kamarul Baharain Basir in the May 2012 edition of the ANRPC publication, Natural Rubber Trends and Statistics.
“The current year is now anticipated to end with a 3.4-percent growth in demand, slower than the 4.5-percent rate anticipated a month ago,” Kamarul wrote.
The ANRPC has made a marginal increase in its projections on total NR production in 2012, to 10.5 million metric tons from the 10.3 million tons anticipated last month, according to Kamarul. NR supply rose 1 percent year-to-year in 2012's first quarter, and the association anticipates year-to-year growth of 3.2 percent in the second quarter, he said.
“These slow rates of output growth can offset the slackness in demand,” Kamarul said.