China - bullish info on Agriculture and energy
posted on
Feb 17, 2011 12:15PM
Edit this title from the Fast Facts Section
I got the following from a newsletter I receive. It reads very bullish on agriculture and oil. I am hesitant to step in on agriculture too much given the recent prices. Sure wish I would have gotten in more 6 months ago.
"Beijing announced that its trade surplus fell in January as increasing commodity prices pushed the value of China’s imports to near record levels. The Chinese also announced that price inflation in January was a lower-than-expected 4.9 percent. Foreign observers noted that Beijing is likely to be playing with its inflation numbers by reweighting its price basket so that rapidly rising food prices have less impact. Despite some scattered snowfall over the weekend, Beijing is still very concerned over the possibility that the winter grain crop will fail. In reaction to spreading alarm around the world that Beijing may be forced to buy food on the international market this year sending grain prices to new highs, China’s Foreign Ministry announced that the country has "plentiful" grain reserves and there is no cause for alarm. However, foreign specialists say it may be too late to avoid serious damage to China’s grain crops.
Of more interest was the announcement that China’s crude imports in January were up 27 percent or 1.1 million b/d over January 2010. At least some of this increase may be caused by increased water pumping to fight the drought in northern China. Should Beijing’s imports continue to grow at anything approaching this rate, the global oil markets are likely to become much tighter this year. "