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The country’s vegetable oil imports fell 6 per cent to 8.35 lakh tonnes in March due to a continuous fall in the shipment of palm oil, industry body SEA said today.
Vegetable oil imports stood at 8.89 lakh tonnes in the same month of the previous year, it said in a statement.
India meets about 60 per cent of its annual vegetable oil demand of 17-18 million tonnes via imports. Palm oil makes up 80 per cent of the country’s total vegetable oil imports.
“Indian refiners prefer to import crude soft oils over crude palm oil (CPO), which reflected in the pattern of imports in the last few months,” Solvent Extractors Association (SEA) said.
Palm oil
Palm oil imports have fallen 23 per cent to 5.45 lakh tonnes in March this year from 7.08 lakh tonnes in the year-ago period.
Among palm oil, crude palm oil (CPO) shipments declined 24 per cent to 4.24 lakh tonnes from 5.58 lakh tonnes.
RBD palmolein
Interestingly, import of refined crude variant (RBD palmolein), which remained higher in the last few months owing to lower prices compared to CPO, fell marginally to 1.12 lakh tonnes in March this year from 1.37 lakh tonnes in the same month last year.
According to SEA, import of non-edible oils fell sharply to 2,499 tonnes from 38,509 tonnes.
Edible oils stock
As on April 1, edible oils stock at various ports is estimated at 6.3 lakh tonnes, of which CPO was 4.9 lakh tonnes. About 7.1 lakh tonnes of edible oil is in the pipeline.
Total stock of vegetable oils both at ports and in the pipelines has gone down to 12 lakh tonnes from 12.45 lakh tonnes in the year-ago period.
Total imports
During November-March 2013-14 marketing year, total palm oil imports have fallen to 22.73 lakh tonnes from 31.20 lakh tonnes in the same period of the previous year, the SEA data showed.
India imports palm oil mainly from Indonesia and Malaysia.
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