20000213

CBOT rice closes lower on burdensome stock

CHICAGO: Rough rice futures at the Chicago Board of Trade closed lower on Friday on another reminder of the large rice stocks worldwide, traders said.

Rice closed 1/2 to 3 cents per cwt lower, with March down 3 at $5.67 per cwt.

"It came from the government report today, there's just a lot of rice around," a trader said.

USDA early on Friday in its February supply/demand report pegged world rice production at a record 397.4 million tonnes in 1999/00, up about 1 million tonnes from last month's estimate. Global ending stocks were boosted to a record 59.4 million tonnes, up about 600,000 tonnes from last month's forecast.

Spreading was featured with the interest in buying new crop boosting the deferred months relative to the nearbys, the traders said.

"The carry-over is so big that they were starting to bear spread some, mainly buying the new crop," a trader said. "I don't see much interest in owning the old crop."

Term Commodities was a noted spreader of the September/July and Lind Waldock also was an early spreader of the September/July, traders said.

Rice futures volume was estimated by the CBOT at 650 lots, below the 1,109 lots traded on Thursday.-Reuters