KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysian palm oil futures fell on Thursday evening, charting a fourth decline in five sessions as the edible oil was weighed down by a stronger ringgit and the prospect of rising production, traders said.

The ringgit rose to its strongest level in over a year on Thursday morning. It gained as much as 0.4pc to 4.0950 against the dollar, and was slightly up 0.1pc at 4.1050 in the evening.

Gains in the ringgit, palm’s currency of trade, usually make the vegetable oil more expensive for foreign buyers.

The benchmark palm oil contract for February delivery on the Bursa Malaysia Derivatives Exchange was down 1.3pc at 2,609 ringgit ($635.57) a tonne at the end of the trading day, its sharpest decline since Monday.

Traded volumes stood at 42,894 lots of 25 tonnes each at the close of trade. The market fell on the ringgit’s strength, a futures trader in Kuala Lumpur said, adding that production was also key to market movements now.

Published in Dawn, November 24th, 2017