- Bloomberg reported India’s Food Minister as saying that the food and farm ministries are in favour of raising import duties on crude and refined vegetable oils. The two ministries support raising the import duty on crude edible oil from 2.5% to 5.0%.

- The Food Ministry favours an increase in the import duty for refined edible oils from 10% to 15% while the Farm Ministry would like to see the import duty at 12.5%.

- Brazil’s CONAB has increased its forecast of the country’s soybean harvest by 5.3mil tonnes to 95.8mil tonnes for 2015F. The revision in forecast was due to increased yields and soybean planted areas. After a spate of dry weather in October, weather conditions have improved in south of Brazil.

- USDA (US Department of Agriculture) has revised its estimate of US soybean inventory for 2014F/2015F downwards from 450mil bushels to 410mil bushels. This was due to stronger export numbers. In spite of the downward revision, ending US soybean inventory of 410mil bushels is still significantly higher than the 92mil bushels in 2013/2014F.

- USDA has also forecast global soybean inventory to rise 35% from 66.6mil tonnes in 2013/2014F to 89.9mil tonnes in 2014F/2015F. Brazil’s soybean output is expected to climb 8.4% YoY in 2014F/2015F while Argentina is envisaged to record a 1.9% expansion in production.

- Jakarta Post reported that palm oil producers in Indonesia are urging the government to lobby Russia, which recently imposed a policy that would restrict the shipment of refined palm oil.

- Last month, Russia enforced a new sanitary and epidemiological regulation, which would prohibit the entry of refined palm oil. GAPKI said that the majority of Indonesian producers might not be able to meet the stringent requirement.

- Under the new rule, Russia limits peroxide value for palm oil to 0.9 milliequivalents (meq) per kg, which is stricter than the international standard of 10 meq/kg.

- Finally, Bloomberg quoted Oil World as saying that Indonesia’s 2014F palm oil production may be higher than expectations due to a recovery in recent months. The country’s CPO output may reach 30.8mil tonnes in 2014F. Although there was a slowdown in CPO production in September and October, production has picked up in November.

Source: AmeSecurities