By Choirul Fuadi)*
CIDISS – One of the crops or commodities in Central Kalimantan province is rubber. Central Kalimantan currently has a land area of 251 thousand hectares of rubber and 78, 56 percent of the amount is a smallholder plantation.
Thus, the selling price of rubber in Central Kalimantan is closely related to the welfare of the people. This was revealed by Head of Representative of Bank Indonesia of Central Kalimantan, Wuryanto. “It is close related, which means that rubber position is very important especially in the effort of developing people economy,” said Wuryanto.
However, in the current development, there are several problems faced in efforts to improve the welfare of rubber farmers in Central Kalimantan, such as the low productivity of rubber as a result of the minimal maintenance by the rubber farmers on the plants.
Currently, rubber productivity in Central Kalimantan is 1.04 tons per Ha or below the national average of 1.23 tons per Ha. In addition, rubber prices in farmers level due to the wrong processing is also low. Currently, the average rubber price in rubber farmers’ level in Central Kalimantan is IDR 4,000-5,000 per kg, very far below the global price of natural rubber which reaches IDR 14.000-18.000 per kg.
In recent years, some of these problems have been aggravated by global rubber price decline since 2012. Based on Bloomberg data, global rubber prices are currently at the level of USD 1.90 per kg, or decreased by 53.77% since in 2012.
)* The author is CIDISS Contributor
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