KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysian palm oil futures continued to fall on Thursday evening in its second consecutive session, tracking weakness on China’s Dalian Commodity Exchange and on estimates of rising palm oil production.

The benchmark palm oil contract for January delivery on the Bursa Malaysia Derivatives Exchange was down 0.7 per cent at 2,723 ringgit ($644.95) a tonne by the end of the session, to its lowest since Oct 13.

Traded volumes stood at 48,701 lots of 25 tonnes each. Palm prices are impacted by movements of related oils as they compete for a share in the global vegetable oils market.

The January soybean oil contract on the Dalian Commodity Exchange dropped 1.5 per cent, while the January palm olein contract declined 1.3 per cent. “The market sentiment has been dampened by a sharp drop in China’s market amid record soybean stocks,” said a futures trader from Kuala Lumpur.

Published in Dawn, October 20th, 2017