KUALA LUMPUR (May 6): The crude palm oil (CPO) futures contract on Bursa Malaysia Derivatives continued its downtrend, ending lower on Friday amid expectations of an imminent cancellation of Indonesia’s palm oil export ban.

Singapore-based Palm Oil Analytics’ owner and co-founder Sathia Varqa said because of that, CPO futures had faced the most intense two days of sell-off, erasing 698 points on the benchmark month.

“Besides, a higher Malaysian April production outlook is feeding into rising supply. CPO production in April increased by 6 to 7% from March data,” he told Bernama.

At the close, the CPO futures contract for May 2022 fell RM324 to RM7,058 a tonne, June 2022 dropped RM441 to RM6,785 a tonne, July 2022 went down RM352 to RM6,400 a tonne, and August 2022 was RM261 lower at RM6,154 a tonne.

September 2022 reduced RM185 to RM6,033 a tonne and October 2022 dropped RM145 to RM 5,974 a tonne.

Total volume improved to 90,733 lots from Thursday’s close of 53,218  lots while open interest reduced to 209,809 from 255,871 contracts previously.

The physical CPO price for May South eased RM380 to RM7,170 a tonne.

Source : The Edge Markets