The price of rubber decreased to an average price of $2,861 per ton in May compared to its peak price so far this year of $3,297 in April, the director general of the Ministry of Agriculture’s rubber department said yesterday.
Lay Phalla said the current decrease in the price of rubber was likely due to the drop in the price of crude oil on international markets, which now trades at around $72 per barrel.
According to Mr Phalla, the price of rubber began the year trading at around $2,815 per ton and had hit the year’s high locally of $3,297 in April. In July 2008, one ton of rubber reached the record high of $3,500 before plummeting to around $900 per ton last year as the global economic crisis took its toll.
“I can not predict if the price of rubber will increase in coming months,” Mr Phalla said yesterday, while noting that China and the US remained the best potential markets for the country’s rubber.
There are currently 108,000 hectares of land devoted to rubber plantations nationally but the government hopes to increase that figure to 150,000 hectares by 2015. Vietnamese state-owned rubber companies also plan to cultivate rubber on an additional 100,000 hectares, contributed by the Cambodian government as economic land concessions, by 2012.
