LONDON, May 9: London white sugar futures inched higher on trade buying in light volumes on Monday, and traders said lower freight rates and weak futures prices had stimulated brisk Asian sugar demand. Front-month August futures were up 70 cents at $244.0 a ton in volume of 236 lots having moved from $245.0 to $244.0.

There has been some trade buying in quiet volumes this morning. The specs are absent, one trader said. Traders said a drop in freight rates and futures prices had stimulated cash sugar demand.

On fundamentals, Brazil could move heavily into Europe’s traditional export markets for sugar if the EU failed to lower prices sufficiently, the bloc’s farm chief said. Turkey set a quota of 9.7m tons of sugar beet for the 2005/ 06 season for the production of 1,173,300 tons of sugar.—Reuters