Malaysian palm oil futures fell on Friday as traders squared positions before the weekend and as weakness in competing oils weighed, but Indonesia's approval of export levies lifted the benchmark to its biggest weekly gain since February. "The market has gone up quite a lot so there should be some weekend position-squaring (and) profit-taking because on Monday you have the MPOB numbers," said a trader with a foreign commodities brokerage in Kuala Lumpur, referring to data from the Malaysian Palm Oil Board on palm stocks due next week.
The benchmark July contract on the Bursa Malaysia Derivatives Exchange edged down 0.5 percent to 2,162 ringgit ($601.39) per tonne by Friday's close. Palm prices climbed 3.4 percent this week, recording its biggest weekly gain in three months. Total traded volume stood at 37,581 lots of 25 tonnes each, above the usual 35,000 lots.
Palm oil prices shot up to a one-month high from September lows this week, largely as a result of news that top palm grower Indonesia has approved a palm export levy to fund its biodiesel policies. Ratings agency Fitch said Indonesia's implementation of the levies will be positive for the tropical commodity in the long run, although it may weaken planters' earnings in the short term.
"Fitch believes producers' financial metrics will weaken in the short term because the benefits of increased demand and pricing will take some time to flow through," it said in a statement on Friday. "Over the longer term, the levy will likely have a moderate positive impact on producers with integrated downstream operations," Fitch said, adding that the levies will "discourage direct exports and improve domestic CPO supplies, which will make domestic palm oil refining more profitable."
A Reuters poll estimates end-stocks rose to a five-month high of 2.13 million tonnes, with crude palm output climbing 11.5 percent. On the technical front, palm oil looks neutral in a range of 2,148-2,196 ringgit per tonne, and an escape will point a direction, according to Reuters market analyst Wang Tao. The most active September soybean oil contract on the Dalian Commodity Exchange fell 1.5 percent in late Asian trade.
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