Demand for oil products and petrochemicals fell, prices of crude oil, refined oil and petrochemicals dropped and world economy showed sluggish growth due to worldwide economic recession in the past two years. Asian financial crisis, which happened in the second half of 1997, had serious impact on Asian petrochemical industry. And both of the economic recession and Asian crisis hit global synthetic rubber industry heavily, especially Asian synthetic rubber industry. In Asia, rubber consumption of major consuming countries fell to varying degrees, consumption of Japan and South Korea declined markedly in particular.
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