Indians are believed to have bought a number of cargoes of raw sugar in recent days, taking advantage of dips in the futures market and strong domestic prices, traders said on Tuesday. India, the world's biggest sugar consumer, had a dismal sugar harvest in 2003/04 (October-September) and is expecting another poor sugar crop in 2004/05 because of a drought in some key cane-growing states.
"People have done some private business, I hear," India's leading sugar buyer, S.L. Jain, member secretary of the Indian Sugar Exim Corporation (ISEC), told Reuters.
"Conditions are good for buying - falling raw futures, that is encouraging," he added, referring to the recent weakness in NYBOT raw futures. Rising Indian sugar prices had also boosted import margins, Jain said. Brokers in the United States talked of Indian purchases of anywhere from 50,000 to 100,000 tonnes of sugar.
Traders believe the raw sugar for India is from Brazil, quoting freight rates from south Brazil to west India steady at around $65 a tonne this week.
Jain ruled out any buying of white sugar in the near term as he said the import duty made such imports unremunerative.
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