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Amid rising demand from the feed industry, India registered record oilmeal imports in four years at 11,42,902 tonnes (1.1 mt) for the year 2019-20.
According to Directorate General of Foreign Trade (DGFT) data, India’s oilmeal/oilcake imports rose to 11,42,902 tonnes worth ₹3,218 crore for 2019-20 as against 6,70,709 tonnes worth ₹2,558 crore in 2018-19. The value of imports rose by 26 per cent.
India imports oilcake/meal for domestic processing as well as for direct usage in cattle/poultry feeds.
“Import of oilcake/meal/feed is rising year by year for processing by solvent extraction industry to recover the oil or for direct consumption by the feed industry. The demand of oilmeal is rising as the feed industry is growing at 8-10 per cent, while oilseed production in the country is more or less stagnant, leading to higher imports,” said BV Mehta, Executive Director, Solvent Extractors’ Association of India (SEA).
The imported oilmeals attract import duty at 15 per cent in addition to 4 per cent special additional duty, totalling 19.6 per cent duty.
Notably, a large quantity of oilcake/meals is seen getting imported at zero duty from some African countries under the India-Africa trade agreement of Least Development Countries or at reduced duty from SAARC countries. Data compiled by the SEA showed that during 2019-20, the main oilmeal import item was sunflower seed oilcake/meal at 554,206 tonnes worth ₹1,003 crore. India is a major buyer from Ukraine and Tanzania.
Coconut oilcake/meal, which is the second biggest import item at 282,697 tonnes valued at ₹504 crore, is mainly imported from Indonesia, the Philippines and Singapore.
Rape/Mustard oilcake/meal ranks third with 46,382 tonnes of imports worth ₹108 crore. India primarily buys it from Nepal, Canada and Ukraine.
India also imported substantial quantity of compound feeds including concentrated for compound animal feed and prawn and shrimps feed at 1,00,935 tonnes worth ₹1,341 crore mainly from Vietnam, Thailand, China and Sri Lanka.
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