Indonesian February palm oil exports at five-year high
JAKARTA: Palm oil exports from Indonesia, the world’s largest producer, jumped to the highest level in at least five years in February after China and Pakistan boosted purchases to benefit from a slump in prices.
Shipments, including palm and kernel oils, gained 9.1% to 2.04 million tonnes from 1.87 million tonnes in January, according to data from the Indonesian Palm Oil Association e-mailed yesterday. That’s the most in a month at least since 2008, according to the earliest available data from the association compiled by Bloomberg, and it beat the median estimate in a survey of 1.51 million tonnes.
Rising exports may help trim Indonesian stockpiles and halt a 34% decline in prices in Kuala Lumpur in the past year. Indonesia’s inventories of the tropical oil used in everything from noodles to biofuels dropped 14% to 3 million tonnes in February from a month earlier, according to a Bloomberg survey published Feb 14.
“It seems that exporters were able to adapt to the new imports rule in China that had caused some concern in January,” said Fadhil Hasan, exec- utive director at the growers’ group, known as Gapki. Demand for Lunar new year festival in February also boosted shipments, he said.
China imposed more stringent rules on edible oil imports to improve food-safety standards with effect from Jan 1 and Indonesia’s exports to the Asian country fell 15% in January. Shipments jumped 108% to 370,110 tonnes in February and sales to Pakistan surged 80% to 149,850 tonnes, Gapki data showed. Exports to India, the world’s largest buyer, fell 13% to 699,770 tonnes and sales to European Union dropped 22% to 305,120 tonnes, the data showed.
Futures in Kuala Lumpur, the global benchmark, fell 6.3% in February, the most since September. The contract for delivery in June fell as much as 1.5% to RM2,360 a tonne on the Malaysia Derivatives Exchange yesterday.
Palm oil and its by-products accounted for 93% of Indonesia’s total February shipments, or 1.9 million tonnes, and the remainder was palm kernel oils, the data showed. Exports in the first two months of the year rose 29% to 3.9 million tonnes from a year earlier, Gapki data showed.