Following this, natural rubber prices staged a mild recovery and closed the week at Rs 28.75 on Wednesday, the last trading day of the week.

The STC's decision to buy the commodity directly from the private dealers came in the wake of the failure of rubber cooperatives to procure sufficient quantity of rubber from the market. STC has also came under fire from different quarters as the natural rubber prices ebbed despite the procurement programme kicked off by the agency in May.

However, despite buying rubber directly from the dealers, STC would continue to place orders with cooperatives as well, sources in STC said.

According to the current plan, the agency would procure 100 tonnes of rubber from private dealers on par with the daily price quotations published by the Rubber Board. According to the arrangement theIndian Rubber Dealers Association would channelise 100 tonnes of rubber per day from different dealers and would deliver the commodity to the different godowns of or assigned by STC within a week.

Once the order is delivered STC officials would grade the rubber and immediately the payment will be released to the private dealers, STC sources said.

The decision to by the State Trading Corporation to procure the commodity directly from the dealers was taken after a meeting convened by Rubber Board chairman recently. STC has came under fire from different quarters following its failure to meet the mandate set by the centre.

It may be recalled that STC's second tranche of rubber procurement has run into rough weather as the cooperatives commissioned by the agency to procure the commodity from open market failed to give delivery as per the order. STC, after getting the second mandate to procure 20,000 tonnes of rubber in May, had appointed five agencies including Rubbermark and Rubco for procuring rubber onits behalf. According to the arrangement, the STC would place orders to these agencies specifying price and quantity to be purchased and the agencies should in turn inform STC about the status of the deal. Once the deal was struck the cooperatives were given seven working days for delivering the quantity.

However, besides the cooperatives could so far deliver 210 tonnes of rubber, sources added.