Jakarta. Palm oil futures in Kuala Lumpur steadied above 4,100 ringgit ($977) per tonne on Wednesday after hitting a 12-week low, as a softer ringgit and firmer Dalian soyoil prices helped the market recover from two straight sessions of losses.

The front-month contract settled around 4,139 ringgit on Nov. 5, down 0.12 percent from the prior day, according to CFD data tracking the benchmark market. Palm oil has fallen 6.7 percent over the past month and is nearly 16 percent lower than a year earlier.

According to Trading Economics, sentiment was helped by an uptick in Malaysia’s October shipments after cargo surveyors reported export growth of between 4.3 percent and 5.2 percent last month. Still, the upside remained limited after data showed India, the top buyer, scaled back purchases in October to a five-month low, with importers shifting to soybean oil following a recent palm rally. Reuters forecasts Malaysian inventories likely rose 3.5% in October to 2.44 million tonnes, the highest in more than a year.

Indonesia’s Trade Ministry separately reported the government’s reference price for CPO for November at US$963.75 per tonne, up marginally from US$963.61 last month, supported by expectations that the country will advance to B50 biodiesel.

Indonesia, the world’s largest producer, has benefited from the earlier price uptrend. January-September palm oil export value jumped about 32 percent to $18.14 billion, statistics office BPS said, helping the nation notch 65 consecutive months of trade surplus as of September. Shipments rose 11.62 percent by volume to 17.58 million tonnes over the same period. CPO and derivatives contributed 9.08 percent of all non-oil export receipts. Exports, however, eased month-on-month in September.

President Prabowo Subianto said his government intends to expand Indonesia’s railway network beyond Java, in part to enhance commodity logistics. The administration sees new lines across Sumatra, Kalimantan and Sulawesi as a way to lower shipping costs and move natural resource cargoes --including palm, rubber, coffee, tin, coal and nickel-- more efficiently from interior regions to ports.

Add as a preferred source on Google +