Asia: with the start of the squeeze, the price of sugar in the market is falling

Dow Jones reported that Asian sugar prices fell in the week to Tuesday due to the arrival of harvests from major Asian producing countries.

The discount of j-spec raw sugar delivered from January to March next year is 15 points for the 1003 period, and there is no quotation; the price for the raw sugar delivered from March to May is 15-25 points for the 1003 period, and that for the high-grade raw sugar delivered from March to May is about 40-70 points for the 1003 period.

"people have cut prices as the harvest in Thailand, India and China approaches and supply increases," said a trader at a trading company in Bangkok.

A trader at a sugar factory pointed out that sugar cane production in Thailand is expected to reach 7000-71 million tons during the 10th crushing season in 2009, slightly higher than the 67 million tons in the sugar production year of 08. It is said that Thailand, the largest sugar exporter in Asia, will begin the crushing of the new sugar year next week.

Maharashtra, India's largest sugarcane state, was squeezed last week, so local sugar prices began to weaken. At present, the price of small grains of sugar on the spot market of vashi in Mumbai has fallen from 32000-33000 Indian rupees / ton last week to 31500-32500 Indian rupees / ton.

Ashok jain, president of the Mumbai Sugar Merchants Association (bsma), said: "as buyers expect sugar prices to continue to decline, the wait-and-see atmosphere begins to intensify and demand has fallen.

However, as there is still a domestic supply gap, prices will not fall too much.

India, the world's largest sugar consumer, estimates that the new crushing season, which began on October 1st, will produce only 16 million tons of sugar, while domestic consumption is as high as 23 million tons.