Prices of soybean in Indore, the benchmark market, rose due to lower arrivals of crops on account of Vasant Panchami. However, outlook for soybean remains bearish as arriving crops are of poor quality.

Daily arrivals were pegged 1,300 bags lower at around 1,200 bags (1 bag = 100 kg) as fewer farmers turned out at the market because of the festival.

On NCDEX, the most-active February contract was largely steady at 4,062 rupees per 100 kg.

Front month bean futures closed the Thursday session with losses of 16 to 16 3/4 cents. Soy meal futures ended with a $4.60/ton loss, and soy oil futures closed down by 89 cents in the March contracts.

USDA reported private exporters sold 30,000 MT of soybean oil to Egypt for 2019/20 MY delivery. The USDA’s weekly update to the Export Sales report showed soybean bookings at 469,710 MT, which was at the low end of analyst expectations.

Soybean shipments from the same report were 1.231 MMT, to put MYTD shipments at 25.458 MMT (23.7% more than the same point from last MY).

Soybean Meal export sales for the same week were 438,762 MT, which was 79.2% more than the same week last year and at the top end of estimates. Shipments for soy meal were 189,245 MT on the week, that is 30.9% below the same week last year.

Soybean oil bookings were in-line with expectations at 29,367 MT. Going back to the weekly bean sales, China purchased 360,871 MT. That was a 59.76% increase over their purchases last week. Soybean shipments to China totaled 556,871 MT that week, which was 133.74% higher than the same week last year, and accounted for 45.23% of the total shipments.