JAKARTA, Dec 5: Malaysian palm oil futures rose more than 2 per cent on Friday on short-covering ahead of a long weekend, recovering from losses earlier in the day, traders said.

The benchmark February palm oil contract on the Bursa Malaysia’s Derivatives Exchange settled up 37 ringgit, or 2.53 per cent, at 1,499 ringgit ($412) a ton after trading as low as 1,396 ringgit a ton in the morning session.

People don’t want to take a position ahead of the long weekend, nothing really exciting, said a dealer in a Malaysian brokerage firm.

Other traded contracts rose between 23 ringgit and 45 ringgit. The overall volume was 12,277 lots of 25 tons each.

Markets in Malaysia and Indonesia will close on Monday to celebrate Eid -ul-Azha.

Players were also waiting for fresh leads, with a slew of key palm oil data from industry regulator Malaysian Palm Oil Board due after the holiday next week.

All the bearish factors have been factored in. People are squaring their positions ahead of next week’s exports and crop reports although they may not provide much support for the market, another dealer said.

Malaysia palm oil futures could fall another 13-15 per cent, to below 1,300 ringgit per ton by April if the price of Brent crude oil goes below $35 a barrel, top industry analyst James Fry said at a conference in Indonesia’s resort island of Bali on Thursday.

But in the next eight to ten weeks, the futures may trade around 1,500 ringgit per ton as production starts to ease from December, another industry analyst, Dorab Mistry, said at the same conference.

In Indonesia, the world’s largest palm producer, palm oil prices fell more than 4 percent, taking a cue from losses in early trading in the Malaysian market, but trading was thin ahead of the long weekend.

The state marketing centre in Jakarta sold crude palm oil at 5,176 rupiah ($0.442) a kg, down 4.2 per cent from 5,405 rupiah a kg on Thursday.

Producers in Medan -- home to Belawan port, Indonesia’s key port for palm oil exports -- did not hold any auctions on Friday.

Refiners in Jakarta sold refined, bleached, deodorised (RBD) palm oil used as cooking oil at 6,000-6,100 rupiah a kg, down 3,2 per cent from 6,200 rupiah a kg on Thursday.

At the physical market in Malaysia, crude palm oil for delivery in Dec stood at 1,470/1,480 ringgit a ton in south region. Trades were done at 1,4401,475 ringgit a ton.—Reuters