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India's vegetable oil imports hit the highest levels so far for the season (November 2018-October 2019) with imports hitting 1.44 million tonnes for March 2019.
The data compiled by the Solvent Extractors' Association of India (SEA) shows that the overall imports of the vegetable oils for the first five months of the year stood at 6.3 million tonnes against 5.9 million tonnes recorded for the same period last year, showing an increase of about 6 per cent.
The import of soft oils including soybean, sunflower, and rapeseed oils grew by a robust 7.5 per cent at 2.13 million tonnes over 1.98 million tonnes reported in the same period last year, while that of palm oils (including crude and RBD Palmolein) grew by a modest 2 per cent to 3.87 million tonnes as against 3.79 million tonnes reported in the same period last year.
Among soft oils, sunflower oil imports rose by 7 per cent to 1.09 million tonnes, while soybean oil imports grew sharply by 19.5 per cent to 988,345 tonnes in the first five months of the year.
During the period under review, import of refined oil (RBD Palmolein) increased to 960,573 tonnes from 770,581 tonnes in same period of last year. The import of crude palm oil also marginally increased and reported at 5,044,494 tonnes from 5,007,554 tonnes in the same period last year.
The share of RBD Palmolein, which hovered around 10 to 12 per cent of the overall palm oil imports, jumped to 22 per cent in March 2019.
In the last year, in international market, prices of various edible oils have gone down in the range of 11 per cent to 22 per cent due to excess supply in the world market, but rupee is depreciated by nearly 7 per cent in last one year, noted SEA.
The import of non-edible oils during March 2019 is reported at 53,302 tonnes as compared to 23,366 tonnes in March 2018. The overall import of non-edible oils during the five-month period stood at 304,339 tonnes as compared to 153,694 tonnes during the same period last year, up by 98 per cent. This is attributed to nil duty on P.F.A.D. and RBD Palm Stearin.
P.F.A.D., C.P.S & RBD Palm Stearin are the major import of non-edible oils, SEA noted.
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