By Lian Cheng
KUCHING, Feb 16: Sarawak does not have the facilities to process crude rubber into latex concentrate, premium latex grade Standard Malaysian Rubber (SMR) or any other specialty rubber grades, says Modernisation of Agriculture and Regional Development Minister Dato Sri Stephen Rundi.
He told the State Legislative Assembly (DUN) while tabling the Sarawak Rubber Industry Board (Sarib) Bill, 2022 today that currently, crude rubber was either converted to field grade SMR or sheets.
He said the rubber industry in Sarawak has been dominated by the smallholder sub-sector which accounted for 99.9 per cent of the total estimated planted area of 165,468 hectares in 2020, scattered throughout the State. There had been no significant changes in hectarage in the last ten years.
Output on the other hand showed a decline from 345,000 tonnes in 2000 to 57,000 tonnes in 2020 — a substantial decrease of 83.48 per cent.
However, the year-to-year production figures in the period, he said, shows that rubber output did respond positively to the favourable price surge of 2010–2017 when a record of 433,000 tonnes was produced in 2011.
“In recent years some 58 per cent of the mature area was left untapped and in semi-forest condition. This is due to the general attitude of most smallholders treating rubber smallholdings as a cash reservoir, leading to the fact that trees are never regularly tapped, except when the price of rubber is high,” said Dr Rundi, explaining to DUN why the Bill needed to be passed to ensure a more efficient management of the long-neglected industry.
He pointed out that on the hand, the trade performance of the Malaysian rubber industry was very impressive in 2020 as exports rose by more than 58 per cent at RM49.2 billion (excluding rubber wood) as compared to the previous year.
To him, the rising trend in the world and local consumption of rubber currently bodes well for the rubber industry.
Malaysia’s natural rubber consumption recorded 12,693 tonnes in 2020 and is expected to rise 22 per cent per year through 2021 due to the rising levels of tire manufacturing in the Asia Pacific region.
Meanwhile, Malaysian synthetic rubber consumption recorded an increase of 16 per cent from 475,746 ton in 2019 to 553,834 ton in 2020.
The expected growth, he pointed out, would be in manufacturing whereby the demand for non-tire applications (automotive, medical, industrial rubber products) are expected to increase and the fastest growing rubber markets would be Indonesia, India, Thailand, China.
“The Rubber Industry in Sarawak needs to be further developed systematically in accordance with the national Rubber Industry Master Plan and in line with the country’s objective to reduce dependence on imported rubber raw materials.
“Sarawak still has large tracts of land, and this fact can help the state to get an additional 200,000 hectares of land within 10 or more years to improve the acreage of rubber plantations through NCR (Native Customary Rights) land development model, as part of efforts to produce rubber latex and rubber wood – creating additional economic activities for the rural farmers,” said Kemena assemblyman during the second reading of the bill.
“Sustainable production of rubber needs to be considered seriously by the State. In fact, as an industrial crop, rubber is one of the most suitable crops to be cultivated by smallholders, which can be a long term and sustainable strategy to reduce rural poverty among the rural farmers.
“The rubber commodity is projected to be one of the significant agriculture contributors to the State GDP, especially with the production of SMR and Specialty Rubber (SR).
“There are good prospects for the Natural Rubber Industry in Sarawak. In 2020, Malaysia imported 349,251 metric tonne of concentrate latex to support its rubber-based industry in the country. This will offer new opportunities for Sarawak to produce latex concentrate in order to reduce the import of latex into Malaysia,” said Dr Rundi, who called for the passing of the Bill. — DayakDaily
