Oct 17 (Reuters) – U.S. corn and soybean export sales were strong during the 2-1/2 weeks the U.S. Department of Agriculture suspended its daily and weekly exports sales reports during the government shutdown, boosted by active Chinese buying, grain analysts and traders said.
Grain traders, deprived of USDA data on the often opaque international market since the shutdown began on Oct. 1, are anxiously awaiting release of the numbers now that the government reopened on Thursday. USDA has yet to announce when the export sales numbers – summarizing the past week’s U.S. commodity sales to other countries – will be released.
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U.S. soybean export sales in the three weeks ended Oct. 10, were estimated at 2.86 million tonnes on average, bolstered by heavy buying by top importer China, according to a Reuters poll of traders and analysts.
Corn sales for those three weeks was estimated at 2.24 million tonnes on average, featuring large purchases by top importers China, Japan and Mexico, they said.
Chinese agricultural consultancy Shanghai JC Intelligence said China has bought nearly 1.2 million tonnes of corn this month.
Wheat sales were estimated at 1.55 million tonnes on average amid large hard red winter wheat purchases by Brazil, traders and analysts said.
That compares with soybean sales of 2.35 million tonnes in the same three weeks last year, corn sales of 507,900 tonnes and wheat sales of 996,900 tonnes, according to USDA data.
USDA reports weekly U.S. export sales every Thursday at 8:30 a.m. ET (1230 GMT) and issues daily announcements of big sales. By law, exporters must report the sale of 100,000 tonnes or more of a commodity to the same destination in one day, while smaller sales are reported weekly. Both were suspended 16 days ago.
USDA announced it would not release the monthly crop report and world supply and demand estimates originally scheduled for Oct. 11. Other delayed data was expected to be released in the coming days.
