REPORTS

Sugar

• Brazil should push through a bill in the first of half of this year to ease limits on foreign purchases of agricultural land in a bid to rekindle economic growth, the agriculture minister said in an interview, adding it would be accompanied by measures to prevent speculation and ensure farms are not left idle.The bill, which is with the president's chief of staff and must go before Congress, is part of a broad series of reforms from oil to airlines as the new government seeks to unwind 13 years of protectionist policy and reverse Brazil's worst recession on record.
• Stocks linked to a missing Chinese billionaire have slumped in trading despite his company's reassurances that it is business as usual.Three companies in which Xiao Jianhua's Tomorrow Group has sizeable stakes tumbled on Friday, the first day of trading after China's weeklong Lunar New Year holiday.Cement maker Xishui Strong Year and Baotou Huazi Industry, which makes beet sugar and electronic components, both fell by the maximum 10 percent daily limit in trading on Shanghai's stock exchange.Xiao's whereabouts are still unknown after reports started circulating this week that he had been seized by Chinese police officers at his luxury Hong Kong hotel and taken across the border to the mainland.
• India will need to import sugar in 2016/17 as its production is likely to fall to 21 million tonnes-22 million tonnes, analyst James Fry said on Thursday."Brazil will have enough sugar to export because the government is making ethanol less attractive," added Fry, chairman of commodities consultancy LMC International, in a speech at an industry conference.
• The Beverage Association of South Africa (BevSA) said on Thursday that it remained convinced that the reduction of obesity rates in South Africa could be done without the negative impacts of taxation in the economy.This comes after BevSA on Tuesday outlined its opposition to a proposed 20% tax on sugar sweetened beverages (SSB) at a joint sitting in Parliament of the standing committee on finance and the portfolio committee on Health. Government has proposed a 20% tax on sugary drinks from April, in a bid to curb the country’s high obesity rate.