20120313 1059 Palm Oil Related News.

Palm Oil Drops From Nine-Month High as Malaysian Reserves Climb
2012-03-12 10:38:34.395 GMT


By Ranjeetha Pakiam
    March 12 (Bloomberg) -- Palm oil dropped from a nine-month
high after stockpiles in Malaysia gained for the first time in
five months in February to stay above two million metric tons.
    May-delivery palm oil declined 1 percent to close at 3,320
ringgit ($1,096) a metric ton on the Malaysia Derivatives
Exchange. Futures reached 3,368 ringgit on March 9, the highest
price since June 7, and advanced 2.9 percent last week.
    Inventories increased 2 percent to 2.06 million tons from
January, the Malaysian Palm Oil Board said in a statement today.
That was more than the 1.9 million tons predicted in a Bloomberg
survey last week and higher than the 1.48 million tons in the
same period last year. Output fell 7.9 percent to 1.19 million
tons and exports shrank 12.6 percent to a one-year low of 1.21
million tons, it said.
    “The market was not expecting stocks to be this high,”
Gnanasekar Thiagarajan, a director at Commtrendz Risk Management
Services Pvt., said by phone from Mumbai today. “It will be
bearish. There could be a near-term correction.”
    The market would continue to look at the global economic
situation and the progress of soybean crops in South America,
said Gnanasekar. Palm oil may trade between 3,250 ringgit and
3,400 ringgit in the next month, he said.
    The March 9 report by the U.S. Department of Agriculture on
U.S. soybean inventories was also “bearish” for palm oil,
Chandran Sinnasamy, trading head at Kuala-Lumpur based LT
International Futures (M) Sdn., said by phone today. Soybeans
can be crushed to make soybean oil, a substitute of palm oil in
food and fuel.

                      Soybean Stockpiles

    U.S. soybean end-stockpiles estimates were unchanged from
the 275-million bushels forecast in February for the 2011-2012
marketing year, he said. “They cut the South American crop as
expected, but they didn’t increase the exports from the U.S. as
rising prices may curb demand, so they left their stocks
unchanged.”
    Malaysia’s palm oil exports jumped 30 percent to 444,259
tons in the first 10 days of March, from the same period in
February, surveyor Intertek said March 10. Shipments surged 33
percent to 448,615 tons in the first 10 days of March, estimated
Societe Generale de Surveillance today.
    Soybeans for May delivery were little changed at $13.38 a
bushel on the Chicago Board of Trade. They reached $13.555 on
March 9, the highest since Sept. 19. Soybean oil for the same
month dropped 0.4 percent to 54.04 cents a pound.
    Palm oil for delivery in September dropped 0.4 percent to
close at 8,530 yuan ($1,348) a ton on the Dalian Commodity
Exchange. Soybean oil for delivery in the same month ended 0.5
percent lower at 9,526 yuan a ton.