Industry Seeks Oilseeds Import Under Ogl

The Central Organisation for Oil Industry & Trade (Cooit) has requested the government to allow import of oilseeds under open general license (OGL) in the context of rising imports of edible oils, worsening capacity utilisation of the extraction industry, and rising edible oil prices.

G G Patel, chairman of Cooit, mentioned that, in the foreseeable future, it may be realistic to assume that production of oilseeds would be inadequate to meet the ever-increasing demand.

Imports of edible oils is, therefore, inescapable in order to maintain the price level and to augment availability.

Patel added that the 17th report of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Food, Civil Supplies and Public Distribution 1995-96 has recommended that import of oils should be slowly dried up and that oilseeds should be imported instead.

 

The Union ministry of commerce, in its annual report 1994-95, has also acknowledged that cheaper import of oilseeds to meet the growing domestic demand may become a distinct possibility in future. Even three years after the report was released, there has been little progress in that direction, Patel lamented.

Godrej Soaps managing director, Adi Godrej, said there is a fear of compartmentalisation of the problem in the mind of some government officials which is totally baseless. "In the past, we used to import oilseeds but we have never faced such a problem. In fact, on the contrary, our production of oilseeds had doubled since 1986-87. At present, we are importing pulses, wheat etc but the problem of compartmentalisation has never come across," he said.

Godrej added that the volume of export/import trade in oilseeds is quite large and other countries have satisfactory arrangements for dealing with the risks of compartmentalisation.

"We have offered our readiness to adopt practical measures for ensuring compliance with departmental procedures. However, we have not been enlightened as to what precisely are the quarantine risks in imports of different seeds", Godrej said.

Industry sources said it is also necessary to clear a misapprehension that import of oilseeds might adversely affect indigenous oilseeds production. Imports of edible oils are only meeting a part of our requirement and are meant to bridge the demand -supply gap. Imports of oilseeds will only partially replace imports of edible oils and, therefore, there need be no misgivings that very large quantities of oilseeds will be coming in.

They added that imports of oilseeds can be so arranged that the landed price of oilseeds is not below the minimum support price (MSP).

Industry has vital stake in the indigenous oilseeds production and would not do anything that would hurt the farmers.