Surprisingly large weekly US export sales of soyabeans reported by the US Department of Agriculture on Thursday were correct, but a sizable share should have been posted in its daily sales announcements, a senior USDA official said. "These sales are correct. A sizable portion of these sales were optional origin sales that were changed to US origin," Peter Burr, chief of the exporting branch of USDA's Foreign Agricultural Service, said in an email.
"Some of these were late sales. But we also found out that a sizable share should have been reported as dailies," Burr said. "If they miss that deadline by much we typically ask that they include the sales in their weekly report. This doesn't happen often but does," he added.
Burr was responding to inquiries by traders who were stunned by USDA's weekly sales figures confirming 2.2 million tonnes of soyabeans were sold by US exporters during the week ended October 16. Of those, 1.7 million were to China, by far the dominant buyer of US soya exports. Traders flagged immediate questions about the sales since the USDA had not reported any sales to China last week under its daily sales reporting system put in place after the market-jolting sales of US wheat and corn to Russia in 1972 by a small number of large exporters.