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India’s vegetable oil imports have dropped by around eight per cent in the first five months of the oil year 2016-17 (November-October) on robust the domestic production of oilseeds rising output of edible oils.
According to latest data released by the Solvent Extractors Association of India (SEA), India's vegetable oil imports for the period November-March stood at 5.79 mt as against 6.31 mt reported in the corresponding period last year, thereby indicating a drop of 8 per cent.
“Due to higher production of oilseeds, lead to rising domestic production of edible oil, slow down in consumption growth and reduction of stock resulted in to decline in import of vegetable oils in last two months,” SEA noted in its report.
India's oilseeds output is projected at a record 33.60 mt for 2016-17, much higher than the preceding two-year lows of 25.25 MT and 27.51 MT respectively.
According to SEA report, the veg oil imports for the month of March fell by 7 per cent to 1.10 mt as against 1.19 mt .
The report also revealed that during the five-month period, palm oil imports fell to 3.5 mt from 3.6 mt during the same period of last year.
“However, overall share of palm oil products increased to 63 per cent from 57 per cent as RBD Palmolein imports surged,” stated SEA in its statement.
Rapeseed oil The import of Soft Oils including soybean, sunflower, rapeseed oil and safflower oil reduced to 2.1 mt from 2.6 mt during same period last year.
"However, among the soft oils, import of Sunflower oil has sharply increased at the cost of soybean oil," it said.
According to SEA, since April 2016 the landed price of RBD Palmolein has remained same or lower than Crude Palm Oil (CPO), which encouraged larger import of RBD Palmolein at the cost of CPO.
“The spread between palm oil and soft oil also reduced encouraging larger import of soft oils.
Attractive price
Also, importers continues to make larger import purchases of Sunflower oil, taking advantage of attractive price versus Soya oil,” SEA stated.
The strengthening of rupee during past couple of months supported the import of vegetable oils.
Rupee against dollar quoted at average rate of ₹68.04 a dollar in January 2017, which came down to ₹65.80 during March 2017.
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