Will the rally in Pepper continue further?

Sham Nair
New Delhi March 28 2010
The current rally which began on 16th March which moved prices up by 20% in all origins have not helped mother India in the export front in capitalising the exports of indian origin Malabar Black Pepper and in fact its going to cause threat in the coming days when the import lobbys pepper hit the shores of cochin which it has bought from Indonesia , Sri Lanka and Vietnam which according to our sources is some thing close to 3000 mt which is al time record high as far as imports are concerned.
Indian malabar asta pepper prices were ruling at usd 2900 - 2950 fob cochin when Srilankan 525 gl peper was offered to cochin at usd 2425 pmt
Indonesian asta pepper was offered usd 2700- 2750 fob Panjang and Vietnam asta pepper pieces were hovering around usd 2575 to 2625 pmt fob Hcmc The current rally has pushed up Indian mg 1 prices to usd 3425 - 3475 pmt where as Indonesian asta prices are still usd 3175 fob Panjang offered on friday and unsold and Brazilian asata usd 3000 fob offered and unsold and Vietnam asta offered usd 3125- 3175 offered and unsold in Newyork market besides srilankan pepper 525 gl offered at usd 2900 cnf cochin offered and unsold on friday which clearly shows the markets are pausing and with long christaian and jewish holidays in the coming two weeks will make markets calmer and quiet. With only 35% harvest of new crop over in Vietnam and still a lot has to hit the market can Vietnam farmers hold back the entire crop and dictate prices is to be seen or other origins will capitalise and take the sales in their books has to be seen.

The sales activities of Indonesia since last year is creating some sort of doubts in the minds of major players wheher Indonesia is a bigger producer of pepper than the publicised Vietnam. As from Idonesia although being the headquarters of International pepper community.all informations about actual crop size, carry over, exports. imports from Vietnam and India everything is kept as a secret which has made the IPC a laughing stock in recent times.
Many buyers need to buy in europe and usa as the sharp increase of 20% has caught them on the wrong foot so a drastic drop in prices are ruled out but a correction is expected before the next rally