Vegetable oil imports in July has gone up by 25% causing imports to reach a record of 1.1 million tonnes compared to 889,493 tonnes last year. Edible oil imports stood at 1 million tonnes, while the rest was non-edible oil imports, according to data released by Solvent Extractors' Association of India.
Crushing of soybean during the last few months was down, this caused India to increase its edible oil imports. Also, prices of soy oil were down which led to huge booking of soy oil. Indian consumption for edible oil also goes up by three to five% every year.
The overall import of vegetable oils during the current oil year from November till July is reported at 8,191,894 tonnes compared to 8,034,553 tonnes up by 2%. Import of soy oil jumped to record level of 306,068 tonne in July 2014, highest in any single month since import opened up in OGL in 1994.
Palm oil import this oil year has decreased to 5,588,845 tonnes from 6,331,441 tonnes compared to the same period last year due to disparity in processing of CPO. Soft oil imports during the current oil year has gone up by 66% to 2.4 million tonnes compared to 1.4 million tonnes last year as Indian refiners prefer to import crude soft oils over CPO in India, SEA said in the release.
However, to bridge the supply gap, soft oils import have increased to 2,459,258 tons from 1,485,182 tons (up by 66%) during the same period of last year. Indian refiners prefer to import crude soft oils over CPO in India, which has reflected in pattern of import in last few months, which can be seen from the following table.
