Nafed to sell mustard seeds

National Agricultural Cooperative Marketing Federation of India, a cooperative trader, plans to sell as much as 200,000 tonnes of mustard seeds to local crushers to help ease a shortage of edible oils.

The cooperative would sell the oilseed from its stockpiles of 400,000 tonnes built over the past year, Alok Ranjan, managing director of the New Delhi-based company, said today in a phone interview.

"We're going to sell mustard seeds from today as it will help improve edible oils availability in the festive season that began this month," Ranjan said.

India's oilseeds production fell 15 per cent to 24 million tonnes in the year ended June from a year ago because of uneven rains, increasing the need to import edible oils.

Mustard oil is the third-most used cooking oil in the South Asian nation and makes up 70 per cent of the winter-sown oilseeds.

The cooperative, also known as Nafed, yesterday scrapped a tender to import 15,000 tonnes of palm oil for delivery next month because of high prices and poor response from suppliers, Ranjan said.

Palm oil has gained 70 per cent in the past year, exceeding the 57 per cent gain for rival soybean oil. It reached a record 2,791 ringgit ($828) on October 16.

Nafed had sought palm oil in cargoes of 5,000 tonnes each for delivery between November 7 and November 20 in Kandla and Mumbai ports.

The cooperative plans to buy edible oils including soybean oil from the spot market overseas, Ranjan said. Nafed imported 51,000 tonnes of edible oils between April 1 and October 17, he said.