Palm oil inches up on export recovery***

KUALA LUMPUR, May 17 (Business Recorder): Malaysian crude palm oil future rose Monday in light trade with some investors buying on a survey showing a jump in exports and strong prices in competing soyoil markets. Traders eyed weather developments in the United States where there was rain and flooding that slowed the pace of corn planting and may affect soybean seeding, potentially boosting grain markets and the vegetable oil complex. Malaysian palm oil futures have fallen 14.1 per cent so far this year on growing stocks although strong export data from a cargo surveyor showed that top buyers China and India will take up more, erasing earlier losses. "The market is getting some support from exports, which is expected but the real drama will come from the US weather, which is potentially disrupting for grains," said a trader with a foreign commodities brokerage. By the midday break, the benchmark August crude palm oil contract on the Bursa Malaysia Derivatives Exchange rose 0.2 per cent higher at 3,255 ringgit ($1,084) per tonne. Overall traded volume was light at 7,412 lots at 25 tonnes each compared to the usual 12,500 lots as some traders took leave ahead of a public holiday Tuesday in Malaysia. Exports of Malaysian palm oil products for May 1-15 rose 27.6 per cent to 533,419 tonnes from the same period a month earlier, cargo surveyor Intertek Testing Services said, showing China and India had started restocking. Higher palm oil demand from China comes after Beijing's commerce minister said the world's No.2 vegetable oil importer would buy 500,000 tonnes of Argentine soyoil, putting to rest concerns that less palm oil cargoes would be taken up by the country. "China needs to restock vegetable oils on all fronts. Both palm oil and soyoil benefit," said a regional vegetable oil trader in Singapore. US oil futures slipped to as low as $98.35 a barrel Monday as the dollar index rose to a six-week high on worries that Greece may restructure its sovereign debt, which weighed on some vegetable oil markets.