Hanoi (VNS/VNA) - Vietnam's rubber exports fell in May due to China’s changingpolicies and fears over the US-China trade war, a representative of the VietnamRubber Group (VRG) has said.

According to the Ministry of Industry and Trade,in May, rubber exports reached 80,000 tonnes, worth 116 million USD, up 6 percentin volume and 7 percent in value compared with April. However, those figureswere down 26.5 percent in volume and 26.2 percent in value year-on-year.

Fortunately, in the first five months of the year,rubber exports reached 495,000 tonnes, worth 673 million USD, up nearly 12percent in volume and 4 percent in value year on year.

The reduction in May’s export value was due toChina’s increase of import tariffs for mixture rubber to 10 percent, said DuongTuan Anh, deputy head of VRG’s Market Department.

Mixture rubber shipped to China made up half ofrubber export volume from Vietnam in the first four months of this year.

The trade war was also encouraging manufacturersand traders to be cautious over the movements of the global rubber market,especially with the G20 conference in Japan coming at the end of June, he said.

The prolonged trade war would affect agriculturalexports and rubber exports in particular because China is the largest exportmarket of Vietnam’s rubber, accounting for more than 60 percent of total rubberexports, he said.

Meanwhile, the US increased taxes from 10 percentto 25 percent for some rubber products imported from China, including rubberlatex, conveyor belts, pneumatic tires, gloves and gaskets from May 10. TheChina Automobile Manufacturers Association said the US tax policy could have abig impact on the country's auto parts exports. That could lead to reduction inrubber imports from Vietnam for production of auto parts.

However, the trade war could attract investment toVietnam’s rubber industry as firms moved rubber product factories from China toVietnam to avoid the US tariffs, he said. 

Besides those factors, the prolonged hot weatherin Vietnam, Thailand and China had slowed rubber output, especially in May -the first month of the new harvest season.

However, according to the Association of NaturalRubber Producing Countries (ANRPC), in 2019, supply of rubber would continue toexceed demand with supply of 14.5 million tonnes, including an inventory of 2.9million tonnes from 2018, with demand of 14.4 million tonnes, Anh said.

He noted that the Vietnam Rubber Group had managednearly 420,000 hectares of rubber in three countries, Vietnam, Laos andCambodia with total annual consumption of about 400,000 tonnes.-VNS/VNA