KUALA LUMPUR, July 26 — The man who correctly called a collapse in palm oil prices during the 1998 Asian financial crisis is
now predicting that prices are due for another slide due to falling demand, Bloomberg reported today.
The newswire said that Dorab Mistry, who in 1998 compared palm oil prices to the famous cruise ship disaster, earning him the moniker “Mr Titanic”, is predicting that
palm oil futures may decline 8.5 per cent to RM2,700 a tonne by the end of the year, the lowest since October 2010.
Mistry is the director of Godrej International, a Mumbai-based commodities trader.
Palm oil prices are already hovering at around the RM2,950 per tonne level compared with more than RM3,200 in January.
The predictions made by Mistry could have an impact on palm oil giant FELDA Global Ventures Berhad (FGVH).
The shares of FGVH, the world’s second-largest IPO this year, continue to remain above its IPO price probably due to interest from institutional index funds, brokers have said.
According to the Bloomberg report, Mistry also predicted that
Malaysia’s palm oil harvest will come in below expectations.
“Production has actually underperformed, even worse than I expected,” he was quoted by Bloomberg as saying.
Mistry said he expected Malaysia will harvest less than 18.6 million tonnes, which is below the government’s 19 million tonne forecast as production enters a less productive cycle following last year’s bumper crop.
It was also reported today that Malaysia’s palm oil exports fell 14 per cent so far this month compared with the same period in June.
In March, it was reported that higher stockpiles of Malaysian palm oil could indicate that the country was losing its competitiveness to Indonesia which had taken aggressive steps to slash export taxes.
Bloomberg
Another few months FGV price will dropped below rm5