Bourbon Tay Ninh Joint-Stock Co., Vietnam’s biggest listed sugar producer, Monday rose 5 percent in Ho Chi Minh City trading as global prices of the commodity increased because of a shortage.

Bourbon Tay Ninh gained by the maximum daily trading limit to close at a three-week high of VND14,800 on the Ho Chi Minh Stock Exchange. The benchmark VN-Index dropped 0.1 percent.

Sugar prices have almost doubled this year, reaching a 28- year high on September 1 in New York, as drought in India and excess rain in Brazil, the world’s biggest producers, damaged crops. The global shortfall in the year starting October1 may be 8.3 million tons, compared with a June estimate of 5.1 million tons, Switzerland-based sugar broker Kingsman SA said September 25.

“The world shortage of sugar and price increases has boosted investors’ expectations of earnings for Vietnamese sugar producers,” said Phan Tung Lam, a Hanoi-based analyst at Habubank Securities.

Lam Son Sugar Joint-Stock Co., the county’s second-biggest listed sugar company, gained 2.9 percent to a record high of VND53,000.

Bien Hoa Sugar Joint-Stock Co., the third-largest listed sugar producer, rallied 4.9 percent to VND36,300, the highest since February 28, 2008.

Bourbon Tay Ninh, based in the southern province of Tay Ninh, reported pretax profit in the August-to-September period of VND102 billion (US$5.7 million), meeting its full-year target, the company said Monday in a statement to the exchange. It didn’t give any comparative figures.