Prices for some commodities, including iron ore and copper, took a hit on Monday, as the potential collapse of one of China’s biggest property developers fueled worries about the economy, and potential declines in construction and demand for raw materials. The “festering fears” around China’s Evergrande 3333, -0.44% are “ raising concerns about a bigger economic crisis in China that could put downward pressure on a lot of the commodities that China consumes,” said Phil Flynn, senior market analyst at The Price futures Group. Evergrande has threatened to default on ...

Malaysian palm oil futures ended higher on Tuesday to snap two sessions of losses after an industry group estimated a decline in September production. The benchmark palm oil contract FCPOc3 for December delivery on the Bursa Malaysia Derivatives Exchange closed up 21 ringgit, or 0.5%, at 4,194 ringgit ($1,002.63) a tonne. Palm had earlier fell to an intraday low of 1.15% due to a sell-off across markets. “After the tumultuous session yesterday, the market was juxtaposed between strong fundamentals and the contagion fear of short-selling by the commodity funds,” said ...

Water management is among the top environmental risks for countries and sectors in Asia, according to Moody’s Investors Service. Of 25 economies in the region, it identified 10 that have highly negative or very highly negative exposure to water management risks — including India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and China. Moody’s said Asia has among the highest water management risks in the world, on a par with those of arid countries in Sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East, despite high levels of seasonal rainfall and large river systems throughout the continent that ...

Argentina’s farm sector, the country’s main exporter, is pushing to speed up dialogue with the new farming minister to resolve simmering tensions between the industry and the government including around contentious limits on beef exports. Center-left President Alberto Fernandez reshuffled his Cabinet on Friday evening after a bruising primary election loss sparked rifts within his administration, including naming a new agriculture minister, Julian Dominguez. Dominguez is an ally of militant Vice President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, and was farming minister from 2009 to 2011 during her presidency, when he inherited ...

Wheat crop production grew by 19 per cent in Oman during the agricultural season 2020/2021 to reach 2,649 tonnes compared to the 2019/2020 season. The Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries, and Water Resources said that the total area of land planted with wheat in the 2020/2021 season amounted to 2,449 acres, constituting a 19.6 per cent rise compared to the last season. The number of farmers also increased by 5.5 per cent. The ministry also added that the Governorate of Al Dakhiliyah topped the Sultanate’s governorates in terms of the highest ...

Kazakhstan raised its forecast for its grains harvest this year while cutting its export forecast, senior officials said at a government meeting on Tuesday. The country sees the harvest at 16 million tonnes of grains, up from a forecast last month of 15.3 million, and exports at 6 million to 6.5 million tonnes, down from an earlier forecast of 6.5 million to 7.0 million, officials said. Harvesting is 95% complete, Agriculture Minister Yerbol Karashokeyev said. “In the new season, the main (export) supplies of Kazakh grain and flour will be ...

In China’s coal sector that has been marred recently by price surges, regional authorities and related enterprises should ensure the fuel consumed by power generators and heat supplying companies is sourced under medium- and long-term contracts, a recent guideline released by the National Development and Reform Commission, the country’s top economic regulator, stated. Wei Hanyang, a power market analyst at BloombergNEF, said,”The policy aims to curb the coal price surge, which could otherwise be unaffordable for power plants or lead to higher power tariffs, which are undesirable for the Chinese ...

Coking coal has surpassed iron ore to become the most expensive raw material input for steel makers, following a blistering rally in prices in the recent weeks, an analysis by S&P Global Platts showed. Global steel mills from East Asia to India, Europe and Brazil have been scrambling to procure metallurgical coal amid a historic rally caused by tight global supplies and disruption in trade flows due to the COVID-19 pandemic. A Platts calculation based on 1.6 mt of iron ore and 0.7 mt of non-premium hard coking coal required ...

There was a meltdown in metal stocks on Monday as a debt crisis at one of China’s biggest property developers, Evergrande, led to a global decline in industrial metals and ore prices. The BSE Metal index, which tracks the prices of India’s top 10 metal and mining companies, was down 6.8 per cent on Monday, its worst showing in months. In comparison, the Sensex was down 0.9 per cent during the day. The sell-off in the metal space was led by steel makers and iron ore producers while non-ferrous metal ...

Australian coal miner New Hope Corp NHC.AX swung to a full-year profit on Tuesday, as demand and price of coal rose in key markets having recovered from the pandemic-induced slump in 2020. For the year ended July 31, net profit attributable was A$79.4 million ($57.63 million), compared with a loss of A$156.8 million a year earlier. Source: Reuters (Reporting by Arundhati Dutta in Bengaluru; Editing by Krishna Chandra Eluri)

China’s state planner, the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), said on Tuesday it had sent out teams to regions, companies and ports to ensure that energy supply and price stabilisation measures had been implemented. An NDRC statement did not specify where the supervision teams, which it jointly dispatched with the National Energy Administration, had been sent to. However, it said their work was manly on-site supervision and included a focus on implementing policies to increase coal production and supply. Top coal consumer China has been striving to boost coal ...

Even as Indonesia wins cautious praise from some green groups for ambitious plans to cut carbon emissions, the world’s biggest exporter of thermal coal shows no sign of weaning itself off the polluting fuel any time soon. Indonesia, the eighth-biggest carbon emitter, recently brought forward its goal for net zero emissions from 2070 to 2060 or sooner, ahead of the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Glasgow in November, and joined a U.S.-led Global Methane Pledge. It also plans to stop commissioning new coal-fired power plants and phase out coal ...

1. Supply concerns drive up global gas prices What’s happening? A tight global gas market—triggered by a cold, long winter, strong competition for LNG cargoes, low storage levels, and constrained Russian gas flows to Europe—has pushed prices across the globe to record highs. Low global LNG utilization rates are also keeping a lid on LNG supplies despite strong demand, especially in China which has become the number one LNG importer on impressive gas-for-power demand growth and a strong industrial recovery. Europe is also struggling to find enough gas to meet ...

Copper prices were flat on Tuesday, hovering near a one-month low as a debt crisis at property giant China Evergrande Group spurred a sell-off across markets and stoked worries about the demand for the metal used widely in construction. Three-month copper on the London Metal Exchange was nearly unchanged at $9,035.50 a tonne by 0627 GMT, after hitting its lowest since Aug. 20 on Monday of $8,975. The contract has lost 5.1% so far this month. Asian stocks struggled to shake off contagion fears and selling pressure persisted amid concern ...

Chicago corn futures slid for a fourth consecutive session on Tuesday as a rapidly progressing U.S. harvest and a stronger dollar pressured prices. Wheat dropped for a second session while soybeans ticked up. “U.S. dollar strength is impacting prices and we have supplies coming in the market from U.S. harvest,” said Phin Ziebell, an agribusiness economist at National Australia Bank in Melbourne. A stronger dollar makes greenback-priced commodities expensive for buyers holding other currencies. The offshore yuan wallowed near an almost one-month low on Tuesday while the safe-haven dollar and ...