March 10 -- Cocoa fell the most in more than two months in London after President Laurent Gbagbo ordered companies to export beans from Ivory Coast, the world’s largest producer. Coffee dropped.
Companies were told to export by the end of this month, or face sanctions, according to Ahoua Don Mello, spokesman for Gbagbo’s government. Gbagbo refuses to leave office and took control of local cocoa purchases and exports three days ago, escalating a conflict with rival Alassane Ouattara, the internationally recognized winner of a November election.
“The market is a bit overbought in the near term, and a correction was needed,” Connor Noonan, an analyst at Castlestone Management Ltd. in London, said in an e-mail today. “This, coupled with Gbagbo announcing that he was going to export yesterday, has taken some of the initial fear of shortages out of the market.”
Cocoa for May delivery slid 71 pounds, or 3.1 percent, to 2,188 pounds ($3,537) a metric ton at 9:46 a.m. on NYSE Liffe in London. The contract dropped as much as 3.3 percent, the most since Jan. 4. In New York, cocoa for May delivery fell $101, or 2.9 percent, to $3,426 a ton on ICE Futures U.S.
“We’re not planning at all to seize the cocoa stocks, as they are the property of the companies,” Don Mello said yesterday. Sanctions would apply if exporters don’t pay the export tax, he said.
Export Ban
Ouattara ordered a month-long ban on cocoa-bean exports on Jan. 23 in a bid to cut off funds for Gbagbo that was later extended to March 15. Beans registered for export in the two weeks ended March 3 dropped 99 percent from a year earlier, according to port figures.
Robusta coffee for May delivery slid $29, or 1.1 percent, to $2,528 a ton on NYSE Liffe. Arabica coffee for May delivery fell 2.9 cents, or 1 percent, to $2.9195 a pound on ICE Futures U.S. after yesterday reaching $2.9665, the highest price for a most-active contract since May 1997.
European coffee stockpiles climbed 4.1 percent from a month earlier to 10.5 million bags on Jan. 31, the European Coffee Federation said in an e-mailed report today.
White, or refined, sugar for May delivery rose 0.4 percent to $754 a ton in London. Raw sugar for May delivery fell 0.7 percent to 30.20 cents a pound on ICE.
--With assistance from Olivier Monnier in Abidjan and Pauline Bax in Johannesburg. Editors: Dan Weeks, John Deane.*****
