GROWTH OF PALM OIL USE SET TO SLOW, OUTPUT TO RISE
  The rate of increase in world palm oil
  use is likely to slow next season despite an expected 800,000
  tonne production rise to 8.13 mln tonnes, Siegfried Mielke,
  editor of the Hamburg-based newsletter Oil World said.
      He told the 8th Antwerp Oils and Fats Contact Days that in
  the next Oct/Sept 1987/88 season, palm oil use will rise to
  8.25 mln tonnes from 7.71 mln, below the five-year average
  increase of 550,000 tonnes.
       Opening stocks at the start of next October are expected
  to be about 1.4 mln tonnes, 300,000 tonnes below year-earlier
  levels, bringing total supplies to 9.5 mln tonnes, he said.
      The anticipated total supplies will be about 500,000 tonnes
  above this season's available amount, Mielke said.
      The increase in mature palm tree areas in Malaysia will
  slow down from this year on, but that will be offset by area
  expansion in Indonesia, he said.
      He estimated the combined rise in Malaysian and Indonesian
  mature area at 8.7 pct next year, after 9.5 pct this year, and
  at 6.7 pct in 1989 and 5.0 pct in 1990.
      Malaysia also is shifting plantings to Sabah and Sarawak,
  where the rate of expansion is higher than in the Peninsula,
  but where yields are lower, he said.
       The stocks/usage ratio of seven major oils is also
  expected to decline, Mielke said. The oils are soybean,
  cottonseed, sunflowerseed, coconut, rapeseed, palmkernel and
  palm.
      At the start of October 1986 stocks of these oils were
  unusually high and represented 6.8 weeks of the current
  season's prospective demand, compared with six weeks a year ago
  and with 5.4 weeks in 1984, he said.
      Mielke expects the ratio to fall to 5.9 weeks by the start
  of next October and to the unusually low level of 5.4 weeks by
  the end of next season.
      The stocks/usage ratio for palm oil was 11.4 weeks last
  October and is likely to be 8.7 weeks next October and 7.7 at
  the end of next season, Mielke said.
      World oilseed stocks also are expected to fall in the
  course of the next season, with the biggest reduction seen in
  soybean stocks, which Mielke expects to decline by 5.0 mln
  tonnes or by one fifth.
      Almost all of the decline is expected to occur in the U.S.,
  for which he estimated ending stocks next season at 10.7 mln
  tonnes, or 393 mln bushels, against anticipated ending stocks
  of 15 mln tonnes, or 551 mln bushels, at the end of this
  season.
  

