Slipping on edible oil

India must address its over-dependence on imports

The dependence on imports for meeting the demand for edible oils has gone up to 70 per cent from almost negligible levels in the early 1990s. In fact, it is projected to move up to over 74 per cent in the next oil year, that is, November-October 2017-18. Such excessive reliance on external sources for an essential item of mass consumption is always tricky, especially since the bulk of the imports are of palm oil and that too from just two countries, Malaysia and Indonesia. Predictably, any disruption in supply can cause a huge upset in the Indian market. Successive