Local experts have projected that the prices of Vietnam’s farm produce such as rubber latex, coffee and pepper will increase in the coming time given an expected rise in demand of importers from China and other markets, the Saigon Times Daily reported.

Last week, China’s central bank reduced the interest rate of one-year loans by 0.4 percentage point to 5.6% and this will enable more Chinese companies to take out loans to import rubber latex and other farm produce for stockpiling.

An executive of an agricultural product trading firm based in Ho Chi Minh City told the Daily that the Chinese central bank’s interest rate cut will place a positive impact on the world’s farm produce market in the short term as the reduction is an opportunity for more Chinese firms to borrow money for goods and material imports.

The executive said there are signs that Chinese companies have increased rubber latex imports for storage in Qingdao city in the east of China.

Flooding in Thailand could affect the global supply of rubber latex and push up the price of this product worldwide in the coming time.

“The price of rubber latex will likely pick up in the short term and the rise will depend on supply and demand,” the executive was quoted as saying. “As supply is higher than demand on the global market currently, the price is unlikely to rise sharply.”

This week, a kilogramme of RSS3 rubber sheets is sold at 27,800 VND in southeast and Central Highlands provinces and the respective prices of SVR10 and SVR3L stay at 22,700 VND and 27,600 VND. These prices are the same to the levels over the weekend.

On Japan’s commodity exchange Tocom, last weekend’s rubber price was quoted at the lowest level in the past seven weeks. The rubber price was around 190.5 yen per kilogramme (some 34,400 VND) for deliveries next month, up 0.2 yen, and 194 yen (around 35,000 VND) for deliveries in January.

Higher demand has also lifted pepper prices on the domestic market. Traders on November 25 bought a kilogramme of pepper at around 194,000-200,000 VND, up 1,000-2,000 VND against the previous day.

The average export price of pepper in the January-September period was 7,558 USD per tonne, rising by 14 percent year-on-year.

Statistics of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development showed that Vietnam shipped 145,000 tonnes of pepper worth over 1.1 billion USD in the first ten month of this year, up 18.5 percent in volume and over 35 percent in value year-on-year.

According to the Vietnam Pepper Association (VPA), local farmers harvested around 150,000 tonnes of pepper in the 2013-2014 crop.-VNA