THE IRA MANAGEMENT COMMITTEE MEETING 2016

IRA arranges Management Committee meeting once a year. This year, the Management Committee Meeting of the International Rubber Association was held at Orchid Room, Excelsior Tower, Level L, Peninsula.Excelsior Hotel, Coleman Street in Singapore on Sunday, 8 May 2016. Associations present comprised of Malaysia Rubber Exchange (MRE), Singapore Exchange (SGX SICOM), Rubber Trade Association of Europe (RTAE), Rubber Association of Indonesia (Gapkindo), Rubber Trade Association of Japan (RTAJ), Myanmar Rubber Planters & Producers Association (MRPPA) and the Thai Rubber Association (TRA).

Prior to the meeting, the IRA Chairman gave a commencement address regarding the state of rubber industry as follows. The year 2015 is one of the most challenging time in the rubber industry, particularly those in the up and mid-stream. Rubber prices have been sold down very aggressively in the face of strong US dollars and weak global economies. Unnecessary speculations are not making life any better for some of us when we are expected to produce rubber for the industrial usage. Yet we end up being caught in the biggest casino of all. In the excuse of having to deepen the liquidity in the rubber future exchanges, we have attracted unfortunately too many counter-productive participants to come to trade in our industry with the pretend of the price discovery. The time has come for us to take a leadership to make a change to this casino mentality. We must encourage less speculation in our industry and better still lesser number of dealers/funds engaging in our industry. Otherwise, it may ultimately lead us to lose our competitiveness.

The important matters of the meeting are the preparation of the new RSS samples according to Green Book, amendments to the IRA Contract for TSR, contract discipline and adoption of new IRA members, viz. Myanmar Rubber Planters and Producers Association (MRPPA) and Thailand Futures Exchange (TFEX).

The IRA Management Committee meeting 2016 was successfully organized.  We hope that IRA will always be an important part of the corporation between producing and consuming countries for continued development of international rubber trade.

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