Malaysia has yet to cover 80,000 tonnes of corn for April shipment, while Vietnam is open for 100,000 tonnes of soymeal as most buyers postponed purchases this week, expecting prices to ease.
The market is awaiting the result of a South Korean tender to purchase 55,000 tonnes of corn for April and May shipment, which is expected later yesterday.
Argentine corn is being offered around $323 a tonne, including cost and freight (C&F), up from $315 quoted last week with a jump of 1.2 per cent in benchmark US corn futures in three days.
Indian corn was offered at $305 a tonne, C&F, up from $290 a tonne last week. Ukraine corn is being quoted around $310 to $315 a tonne. But traders said Asian buyers were expecting prices to soften on expectations of ample supplies.
“The outlook on grains is bearish, as buyers are looking at higher supplies in the coming months,” said one trading manager with a global trading company in Singapore. “They will try to put off buying plans until the last moment.”
Global crop prices will retreat sharply this year, as farmers around the world expand production to bring stability back to commodity markets and ease fears of food inflation, according to the US government.
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The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) forecast US wheat plantings at 58 million acres, up 3.6 million from 2011. The USDA pegged world wheat stocks at a record 213.1 million tonnes. The USDA’s outlook conference left unchanged from its baseline projections the forecast for 94.0 million acres of corn this year in the United States, the most since 1944.
Larger volumes of corn and wheat are also expected to come to international markets from the Black Sea region’s leading grain producers, Kazakhstan and Ukraine, posing a bigger challenge to US exporters and threatening to drag down global prices. The International Grains Council raised its global wheat production forecast by five million tonnes to a record 695 million and expects world stocks to rise to 211 million tonnes, eclipsing the previous record in 1999-2000. As a result of higher wheat supplies, prices of Australian feed wheat fell this week with traders quoting $289 a tonne, C&F, to Southeast Asia, down from $296 traded last week. The forecast on soybean prices is bullish, with South American drought curbing supplies. US soybean futures rose to a five-month high this week, helped by a weaker dollar, good export demand and concerns about crop production in Argentina and Brazil.