Edible oil imports up 32% in 9 months

Share of imported refined oils has declined to 10% from last year's 18%

India's edible oil imports in the November-July period, that is nine months of the oil year, is seen up 32 per cent, at 35.46 lakh tonne, according to data released by The Solvent Extractors' Association of India on Monday.

As reported by Business Standard earlier, if the edible oil imports are same as last year in the remaining quarter of the oil year around 17 lakh tonne, the total imports in 2004-05 will be at an all time high of 50.2 lakh tonne.

The rise in import of crude edible oils continues at the cost of refined ones following a favourable duty structure towards the former. Year on year, the share of refined oils in the import basket has declined to 10 per cent from last year's 18 per cent while that of crude has risen to 90 per cent from 82 per cent last year.

In the November-July , import of crude oil was seen at 31.79 lakh tonne and that of refined at 3.67 lakh tonne.

In the same period, palm oils import was seen at 22.55 lakh tonne, that of soft oils, largely soyoil (12.57 lakh tonne) rose to 12.91 lakh tonne from 440,434 tonne last year. The rise in soyoil in the period has been phenomenal on year, said a SEA official, almost three times.

Overall, the incremental rise in import is due to that in soyoil where as import volumes of palm oil largely remained at similar level, when compared to last year. This has led to a reduction in palm oils import in the import basket to 64 per cent from 84 per cent last year while share of soft oils has risen to 36 per cent from 16 per cent.

In the non-edible oils category, the imports in the November-July period have risen 70 per cent on year at 2.69 lakh tonne. Crude palm stear in at 1.34 lakh tonne is the major non-edible oil being imported.

July imports: The total import of vegetable oils, edible as well as non-edible, in June is pegged at 5.23 lakh tonne. Edible oils imports in July touched a record level of 4.84 lakh tonne compared with last year's 2.92 lakh tonne.The import of non-edible oil in June is seen at 38,789 tonne compared with 12,295 tonne last year.