Malaysia will not be fixing the floor price for natural rubber (NR) at RM3 per kilogramme anytime soon as it will result in an additional expenditure of RM1.29 billion,
Deputy Plantation Industries and Commodities Minister Datuk Datu Nasrun Datu Mansur said fixing the price would also give room to speculation by irresponsible rubber traders.
“Currently, there are no plans. Price fixing would give rise to the smuggling of NR into the country as local prices will be higher than international prices,” he said.
The deputy minister was responding to a question from Datuk Johari Abdul (PKR-Sungai Petani) who asked when the government would announce a floor price for NR.
Datu Nasrun elaborated that the government, concerned over the welfare of rubber growers, had introduced the Rubber Production Incentive (IPG) scheme in 2015 to assist rubber smallholders.
Meanwhile, he also said that some 111,535 smallholders and rubber tappers out of 483,941 who are eligible to receive the monthly Monsoon Season Aid (BMT), have yet to apply for the assistance.
He said up to January 31 this year, a total of 372,406 applications were received with a total allocation amounting to RM179,732,600.
Datu Nasrun said the monthly financial aid of RM200 was still relevant as it was a temporary financial aid to help smallholders and rubber tappers tide over the monsoon season.
The BMT (where recipients received monthly financial aid of RM200 beginning November 2017 until January 2018), was introduced aimed at reducing the impact on the smallholders and rubber tappers whose income were adversely affected during the monsoon season.