India sees 25% fall in vegetable oils import to to 1.1 MT in Nov: SEA

The country's vegetable oils import declined by 25 per cent to 1.1 million tonne in November, the first month of the 2023-24 oil year, compared to 1.5 million tonne in the year-ago period, industry body SEA said on Friday.

Of the total vegetable oil imports, edible oils were 1.1 million tonnes and non-edible oils 12,498 tonnes during November 2023.

India, the world's leading vegetable oil buyer, imports refined and crude vegetable oils in the edible oil category. Oil year runs from November to October.

According to the Solvent Extractors Association of India (SEA), the country's crude vegetable oils declined by 26.34 per cent to 0.9 million tonnes in November this year as against 1.3 million tonnes in the year-ago period.

Similarly, refined vegetable oils import declined by 15.41 per cent to 1,71,069 tonnes in November this year from 2,02,248 tonnes in the year-ago period.

Among crude vegetable oils, although the import of RBD palmolein declined in November 2023 to 0.17 million tonnes from 0.202 million tonnes in the year-ago period, but the shipments tripled from 53,497 tonnes in October this year.

SEA said the current effective import duty difference of 8.25 per cent between crude palm oil (CPO) and refined oil encourages imports of refined palmolien into the country as opposed to CPO.

"Needless to say this import of finished goods is contrary to our national interests and is seriously affecting the capacity utilisation of our Palm refining industry," it said in a statement.

The main reason for rise in palmolien imports is the encouragement given by exporting countries (Malaysia and Indonesia) to their industry. They have kept high export duties on crude palm and low export duty on refined palmolien, it said.

"The import duty difference of 8.25 per cent levied by India between CPO and palmolien is insufficient to regulate the imports of palmolien," the industry body noted.

According to SEA data, import of CPO declined to 0.692 million tonnes in November this year from 0.931 million tonnes in the year-ago period.

Similarly, import of crude sunflower oil declined to 0.128 million tonne from 0.157 million tonne, while that of crude soyabean oil fell to 0.149 million tonne from 0.229 million tonne in the said period.

As of December 1, edible oil stock was 2.960 million tonne, down by 0.179 million tonne from the previous month.

India imports palm oil mainly from Indonesia and Malaysia, and a small quantity of crude soft oil, including soyabean oil from Argentina. Sunflower oil is imported from Ukraine and Russia.