New York: Sugar prices fell on Thursday, capping the biggest four-day slump in 17 months, on mounting evidence of sagging global demand by importers and increasing sales by investment funds.
Egypt cancelled a tender to buy 300,000 metric tonnes, Al Ahram newspaper reported, citing Hassan Kamel, the chairman of the state-run Sugar and Integrated Industries Company.
In four days, raw-sugar futures in New York plunged 13 per cent, the steepest since October 2008.
"The market has had a substantial crash," said Mark Hansen, a director at CPM Group, a research and asset-management company in New York.
"Buyers are happy to stand on the sidelines waiting for prices to come down further."
In other markets, soybeans had the biggest drop in almost two months on speculation that importers will curb purchases of US supplies and opt for record crops in South America. Rice also dropped.
The UBS Bloomberg Constant Maturity Commodity Index fell 0.6 per cent to 1,283.74.
Sugar for May delivery declined 0.42 cent, or 2.1 per cent, to 19.27 cents (Dh0.70) a pound on ICE Futures.
The most-active contract touched 18.82 cents, a seven-month low.
"It feels as if the market has sold out temporarily, but we can never rule out another wave of liquidation" by investment funds, said Jonathan Kingsman, the managing director of Kingsman SA, a broker in Lausanne, Switzerland.
Soybean futures for May delivery slid 27.5 cents, or 2.9 per cent, to $9.305 a bushel on the Chicago Board of Trade, the biggest drop for a most-active contract since January 12.
The price has dropped 11 per cent this year.
China, the world's biggest oilseed importer, cancelled 192,400 metric tonnes of US purchases in the week ended March 4, the Dep-artment of Agriculture said Thursday.
Weekly sales of soybean meal, used for animal feed, plunged 98 per cent to 1,900 tonnes, the lowest level since the start of the marketing year on October 1.
"We finally have evid-ence of a slowdown in demand from China," said Jerry Gidel, a market analyst at North American Risk Management Services in Chicago.
"Other buyers are likely to wait for lower prices from South America."
Rice fell to an eight-month low after the government said US growers will plant more, adding to ample inventories.
Stockpiles will reach 1.8 billion kilogrammes in the year ending July 31, up 34 per cent from a year earlier, the US Dep-artment of Agriculture said.
Growers will seed 3.14 million acres, up from three million, the agency said.
"The US farmer is not going to curtail his acreage numbers," said Dennis DeLaughter, a grower and the owner of Progressive Farm Marketing in Edna, Texas.
"We may come into this big carry-over with another increase in supply. We don't need that."
