Market and product

Over recent years, the rubber industry of Vietnam in general and Binh Phuoc Province in particular obtained high achievements in its production and trading activities. In Binh Phuoc, the rubber industry makes a 33 percent contribution to the provincial budget revenue, provided more than 30,000 jobs each year and contributed to improving living standards of locals including ethnic minority people.

Having acknowledged great benefits that rubber trees bring in, Binh Phuoc strives to maintain or expand its rubber cultivation area and improve rubber yield.

Rubber farmers in Binh Phuoc Province are interested in intensive cultivation and production output and yield improvement. Many farmer households attach much importance to seed and soil factors and learn about how to nurture rubber trees and extract rubber latex according to the rubber sector's industrial processes.

Rubber farmers and businesses in Binh Phuoc Province strived to fulfill set targets, made contributions to the state budget and contributed to promoting socioeconomic development in the local region. In the first five months of 2011, the Dong Phu Rubber Joint Stock Company make VND490.4 billion in revenue including a profit of VND176.3 billion that is 40 percent of the year's target.

The Binh Long Rubber Company Limited of the Vietnam Rubber Group has about 15,000ha of rubber in Binh Long Town and Chon Thanh District in Binh Phuoc Province. The company has two enterprises that have a capacity to produce 35,000 tonnes of different rubber products (SVR CV50, SVR CV60, SVR L, SVR 3L, SVR 5, SVR 10, SVR 20 and centrifugal latex) each year. Company general director Nguyen Thanh Minh said that the company's products are exported to France, Germany, the UK, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Russia, the Ukraine, Turkey, China, the Republic of Korea, Chinese Taipei, Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Australia, Argentina and the US.

Phan Van Don, the director of the Binh Phuoc Province Department of Agriculture and Rural Development, said that the province has experienced fast rubber development, and that the rubber cultivated area in the province has reached 160ha, 10ha more than the plan for 2015, and the area is expected to reach 200,000ha in 2015. Rubber is a long-term crop so high quality varieties need to be planted in new areas, while farmers need to be advised how to effectively use fertilizers and control pests and properly extract rubber latex. A strategy for rubber price stabilization needs to be constructed soon.

Increases in rubber prices encourage many people to plant rubber trees and they do this despite that no related appropriate plan exists. This causes relevant authorities' headache. The authorities need to have proper plans for rubber cultivation, while rubber processing facilities need to be constructed and raw rubber materials needed to be produced according to the market's demand. Improving preliminarily processed rubber quality management, product quality certification application, increasing contract-based rubber export, market diversification, domestic market development, and development of trademarks for rubber exports from Binh Phuoc in particular and Vietnam in general are important./.