Country's vegetable oil imports rose by 59% in February to 8.75 lakh tonne against 5.50 lakh tonne in the year-ago period, according to industry data released today.
In November-February period of the current oil year, import of vegetable oils -- that includes edible oil and non-edible oils -- rose by nearly 14% to 30.60 lakh tonne compared to 26.93 lakh tonne in the same period of the 2010-11 oil year.
Oil runs from November to October.
In the first 4 months of the 2011-12 oil year, import of edible oils rose to 30.02 lakh tonne from 26.13 lakh tonne in the last oil year, while that of non-edible oils fell to 58,519 tonne from 80,275 tonne in the same period, Solvent Extractors' Association of India said in a statement.
According to SEA, import of RBD palmolein have jumped 300% due to low export duty on refined edible oil and high export duty on crude palm oil (CPO).
"In February, 2012 import of RBD Palmolein shoot up to over 3 lakh tonne from average of 1.10 lakh tonne in earlier three months, thanks to lower duty on RBD Palmolein (8%) and higher duty on CPO (16.5%) introduced by Indonesian Government," it pointed out.
The situation is likely to continue unless India takes some corrective steps including change of tariff value and raising import duty on refined oils, SEA said.
India imports about 50% of domestic requirement. The country imports palm oil from Indonesia and Malaysia, while soyabean oil is imported from Brazil and Argentina.
Over 8.67 million tonne of vegetable oils were imported in 2010-11 oil year. At present, there is zero duty on imports of crude edible oils, but import of refined edible oils attract 7.5% custom duty.
