By Emily Chow
The benchmark palm oil contract for March delivery on the Bursa Malaysia Derivatives Exchange was up 1.7 percent at 2,156 ringgit ($521.15) a tonne at the midday break.
It earlier rose as much as 1.8 percent to 2,159 ringgit, its strongest levels since Dec. 21.
Trading volumes stood at 14,848 lots of 25 tonnes each at noon on Wednesday.
"Palm is higher today on India's import tax cut and production, which is expected to be down for the whole month also," said a futures trader in Singapore.
Palm oil output in Malaysia, the second largest producer of the vegetable oil, seasonally declines in the first few months of the year after peaking in the previous quarter.
November production had slid 6.09 percent from the previous month to 1.85 million tonnes, according to industry regulator data.
India, the world's largest importer of edible oils, said late on Monday it would lower the duty on crude palm oil imports to 40 percent from 44 percent, while a tax on refined oils was cut to 50 percent from 54 percent.
Malaysian shipments of refined palm oil, however, will be taxed at 45 percent compared with 54 percent earlier.
Despite the tax cuts, traders expect market gains to be short-lived as palm inventory levels in Southeast Asia remain high.
In other related oils, the January soybean oil contract on the Dalian Commodity Exchange rose 0.6 percent and the Dalian January palm oil contract gained 1.5 percent.
Palm oil prices are impacted by changes in soyoil prices, as they compete for a share in the global vegetable oil market.
Palm, soy and crude oil prices at 0453 GMT:
Contract Month Last Change Low High Volume
MY PALM OIL JAN9 2060 +56.00 2030 2066 69
MY PALM OIL FEB9 2113 +39.00 2090 2118 1169
MY PALM OIL MAR9 2156 +35.00 2132 2159 7130
CHINA PALM OLEIN JAN9 4118 +62.00 3868 4130 2378
CHINA SOYOIL JAN9 4922 +28.00 4846 4922 1014
CBOT SOY OIL JAN9 27.55 +0.00 0 0 0
INDIA PALM OIL JAN9 517.80 +3.80 516.40 519.8 315
INDIA SOYOIL JAN9 733.4 +3.25 731.5 734 1620
NYMEX CRUDE FEB9 44.98 -0.43 44.86 46.00 55614
Palm oil prices in Malaysian ringgit per tonne
CBOT soy oil in U.S. cents per pound
Dalian soy oil and RBD palm olein in Chinese yuan per tonne
India soy oil in Indian rupee per 10 kg
Crude in U.S. dollars per barrel
($1 = 4.1370 ringgit)
($1 = 69.6880 Indian rupees)
($1 = 6.8564 Chinese yuan)
(Reporting by Emily Chow; Editing by Rashmi Aich)
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)