RUBBER-Japanese futures track Shanghai lower, head for weekly fall

* Japanese rubber futures fell on Friday and were headed for a weekly drop, as a weaker Shanghai market and concerns about a global economic slowdown weighed on sentiment.
* The Osaka Exchange rubber contract for July delivery was down 2.0 yen, or 0.9%, at 225.4 yen ($1.71) per kg, as of 0208 GMT.
* For the week, the benchmark OSE contract has lost about 0.4%.
* The rubber contract on the Shanghai futures exchange for May delivery was down 40 yuan, or 0.3%, at 12,630 yuan ($1,860) per tonne.
* Japan's benchmark Nikkei share average opened up 0.46%.
* Japan's wholesale prices in January rose 9.5% from a year earlier, data showed, adding to growing signs of inflationary strains that could keep the central bank under pressure to phase out its massive stimulus programme.
* China's January factory gate prices fell more than economists expected, suggesting that flashes of domestic demand that had stoked consumer prices after the zero-COVID policy ended are not yet strong enough to rekindle upstream sectors.
* Rubber markets are waiting for signs of a demand pick-up in top buyer China following the week-long Lunar New Year holiday, and after the country lifted its strict COVID-19 curbs at the end of 2022.
* The dollar slid and a global equity rally lost steam on Thursday as nagging concerns about the economy and the future pace of central bank interest rate hikes unsettled investors who earlier pushed European stocks to almost one-year peaks.
* The front-month rubber contract on Singapore Exchange's SICOM platform for March delivery last traded at 138.4 U.S. cents per kg, down 0.3%.
($1 = 131.6500 yen) ($1 = 6.7916 yuan) (Reporting by Matthew Chye; Editing by Subhranshu Sahu)