Soymeal exports fell to 60,228 tonnes in May—a decline of 32 per cent over the same period last year—due to poor availability and high cost of soybean in the domestic market. The country had exported 89,156 tonnes of soymeal in May 2009.
“Soymeal export has been on a downtrend because processing of soybean is becoming uneconomical,” Soybean Processors Association of India (Sopa) Spokesperson and Coordinator Rajesh Agarwal said.
The arrivals were low and the international prices of the bean were very competitive, he said, adding that the country’s oilseed was expensive and unable to match those rates.
According to Sopa data, export to the biggest soymeal importer Japan had slumped by 43 per cent to 12,262 tonnes in May compared to April. For the first seven months of the 2009-10 oil year (October–September) too soymeal exports declined by 41 per cent to 160,000 tonnes as against 270,000 tonnes in the same period previous year.