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India's edible oil imports provisionally fell 34 per cent during the month of April 2020 amid logistic disruptions at destinations and discharge ports following the nation-wide lockdown to contain the coronavirus outbreak.
The Solvent Extractors’ Association of India (SEA) has compiled the provisional data of edible oil imports during the month of April, which reported total imports at 790,377 tonnes as against 1,198,763 tonnes in the same month last year, indicating a dip of 34 per cent on year-on-year basis.
Logistics issues
SEA said the drop in April is mainly due to logistics issues at destinations as well as at discharge ports.
“The overall Import of edible oils during November-2019 to April-2020 is reported at 6,182,184 tonnes, as compared to 7,203,830 tonnes during the same period of previous year, down 14 per cent,” it noted.
SEA also noted that the imports of crude palm oil (CPO) and (CPKO) fell 14 per cent during the November 2019 to April 2020 period over the same period previous year. Also, the import of RBD Palmolein drastically fell to 29,750 tonnes in April 2020, as against 2,38,479 tonnes reported in the same month last year, indicating a fall of 87 per cent.
The association attributed the fall in palm oil products imports to “destruction of demand from HoReCa segment during the Covid-19 lockdown period.”
Soft oil imports
It also noted that the decline in the imports of palm products have directly benefited the imports of soft oils, such as soyabean and sunflower oils, which is evident from their increase in imports by 13per cent and 12per cent respectively, as the household demand in consumer packs grew.
SEA clarified that due to the nationwide lockdown, it was unable to collate data from all sources for the given period.
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