20120322 1503 Palm Oil Related News.

Palm Oil May Advance on Concern Malaysian Production to Decline
2012-03-22 04:00:26.940 GMT
By Ranjeetha Pakiam
March 22 (Bloomberg) -- Palm oil, little changed, may gain on speculation that production in Malaysia, the second-largest supplier after Indonesia, will drop before recovering in May.
June-delivery palm oil climbed as much as 0.5 percent to 3,383 ringgit ($1,098) a metric ton on the Malaysia Derivatives Exchange before trading little changed at 3,365 ringgit at 11:50 a.m. in Kuala Lumpur. Futures have advanced 6 percent this year.
Production in Malaysia is expected to be little changed this year, and from March, output each month will be less on a year-on-year comparison, Dorab Mistry, a director at Godrej International Ltd., said March 7. Output in February dropped 7.9 percent to 1.19 million tons from a month earlier for a fourth monthly decline, according to data from the nation’s palm oil board. January and February are seasonally low-production periods.
“In the next one-to-two months, Malaysia is going to see some production disappointment,” Alvin Tai, an analyst at OSK Holdings Bhd., said by phone in Kuala Lumpur. Output may bottom out in April, before it starts to recover, he said.
Shipments of palm oil into China, the biggest vegetable oil consumer, may total 503,100 tons in March, the Ministry of Commerce said on its website today. China’s imports were 383,666 tons in February, the customs agency said yesterday.
Indonesia will raise the tax rate for crude palm oil exports to 18 percent in April from 16.5 percent this month, Deddy Saleh, director general of foreign trade at the Trade Ministry, said in a mobile-phone text message today.
Soybeans for May delivery were little changed at $13.5325 a bushel on the Chicago Board of Trade. Soybean oil was also little changed at 54.41 cents a pound.
Palm oil for delivery in September was little changed at 8,540 yuan ($1,352) a ton on the Dalian Commodity Exchange. Soybean oil for delivery in the same month was also little changed at 9,552 yuan a ton.