India's vegetable oil imports have declined by 19 per cent to 1.02 million tonnes for the month of January 2017 as against 1.24 tonnes in the corresponding month last year.

The overall import of vegetable oils during first three months of current oil year 2016-17, November 2016 to January 2017 stood at 3,410,008 tonnes as compared to 4,016,391 tonnes, down by 15 per cent on year-on-year basis, revealed data compiled by the Solvent Extractors’ Association of India (SEA).

"Import has reduced due to good kharif oilseeds crop and thus better domestic availability of edible oils and utilization of stock. Also, currency crunch due to demonetization has slow down the purchases by end consumers also affected the demand and import to some extent," SEA stated in its statement on Wednesday.

SO far in 2016-17 oil year, import of refined oil (RBD Palmolein) increased to 683,125 tonnes from 613,546 tonnes in the same period of last year, showing 11 per cent rise, while import of crude oil decreased by 21 per cent to 2,655,119 tonnes from 3,383,879 tonnes during the same period of last year.

Since April 2016 and onwards, the landed price of RBD Palmolein and CPO have remained more or less the same encouraging 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. Also, importers continues to make larger import purchases of Sunflower oil, taking advantage of the still large price discount versus Soya oil, SEA maintained.

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