KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysian palm oil futures fell on Tuesday evening to snap five sessions of gains, as it dipped on weak demand.
At the close of trade, benchmark palm oil futures for May delivery on the Bursa Malaysia Derivatives Exchange were down 1.2 percent at 2,859 ringgit ($643.19) a tonne. In the previous session, they hit 2,898 ringgit, their highest in more than two weeks.
Traded volumes stood at 26,234 lots of 25 tonnes each on Tuesday evening.
"The market is down as there are no buyers," said a palm oil trader in Kuala Lumpur.
Palm oil exports from Malaysia, the world's second-largest producer, fell between 12 percent and 14 percent in February compared with a month earlier, showed cargo surveyor data.
Traders had also expected the market to drop due to expectations of bearish price forecasts at an industry conference in Kuala Lumpur this week.
Palm prices are seen weakening between now and the second-half of this year as production levels are expected to recover when the effects of a crop-damaging El Nino wear off.
World palm oil production is forecast to climb 11 percent to 65 million tonnes this year from 58.3 million tonnes a year ago as a near-perfect weather boosts yields, a senior industry official said at the conference on Tuesday.
In related vegetable oils, soybean oil on the Chicago Board of Trade dropped as much as 0.9 percent, while the May soybean oil contract on the Dalian Commodity Exchange declined up to 1.4 percent.
The May contract for palm olein on the Dalian Commodity Exchange lost 0.6 percent.
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