In the North-East of Brazil and the subtropical part of India sugarcane the sowing campaigns are under way in order to get abundant harvests in the 2012-2013 marketing year. In the meantime, the topical parts of India and Thailand are currently seeing harvesting campaigns.
The Indian government approved the export of another million tons of sugar in order to protect the domestic market from a price decline on intensive sugarcane refining. This will definitely affect the global sugar market. India is the world’s largest sugar consumer and 2nd largest producer (after Brazil).
All the info stated above suggests a bearish tendency in the global market of sugar. However, there are some restraining factors for the bears. For example, in China the annual consumption of sugar per capita is just 7.6kg while in Japan and South Korea it is equal to 29kg and 36kg correspondingly. In the USA a person consumes 67.6kg of sugar per year on average. That is why China is planning to expand its own production of sugar in long-term perspective, but for now, it has to import more of it. In 2011 China imported 2.4M tons of sugar and is going to increase it up to 4-5M tons in the coming years.
According to the Department of Commodity Trading of , the ICE’s March futures contracts are being traded around November’s prices. The market has been bearish so far. The current levels of support are 22,63 – 25,24. In January the price whipsawed the top of the range and retraced back into it.
