Brazil May Increase Sugar Exports by 20% This Year on Demand, Conab Says

Brazil, the world’s biggest sugar producer, may export 20 percent more of the sweetener this year as Indian shipments slow and global demand increases, an Agriculture Ministry official said.

The South American nation may export around 29 million tons this year, compared with 24.2 million tons in 2009, Wellington Teixeira, a sugar market analyst at the ministry’s crop forecasting agency, said today in a telephone interview.

“World demand is very heated and India faces an output drop, opening new spaces to Brazil,” he said from Brasilia. “The trend is to see Brazil exporting more and more sugar.”

Sugar output in India, the world’s second-biggest producer, fell 46 percent to 893,000 metric tons as of Nov. 15 from a year earlier, according to a Dec. 3 report from the country’s food ministry. Heavy rains have slowed the country’s harvest.

Conab, as the Brazilian governmental agency is known, may lower its forecast for sugar output for a second time this year because of dry weather, Teixeira said. Mills may produce around 37 million tons of the sweetener in 2010, less than 38.2 million tons estimated by Conab in September, he said.

Conab will release its final output forecast on Jan. 6.

To contact the reporter on this story: Katia Cortes in Brasilia at at kcortes@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Dale Crofts at dcrofts@bloomberg.net