India's vegetable oil imports in September this year increased by six per cent to 960,000 tonnes due to rise in edible oil demand, Solvent Extractors' Association said.
"India's oilseeds production is stagnant for the last several years, but the demand for edible oil is increasing. As a result, imports are rising to bridge the demand-supply gap," SEA Executive Director B V Mehta told PTI.
Mehta said in the last month (October) of the current oil year, India might import another 600,000-800,000 tonnes vegetable oils taking the total to 9-9.2 million tonnes for the entire year.
Out of the total vegetable oil imports during September, edible oils were 942,000 tonnes and the remaining 18,495 tonnes were non-edible oils.
India had imported 905,000 tonnes vegetable oils in September last year, SEA said in a statement.
According to a recent report of Rabo India Finance, the country's edible oil consumption is likely to go up to 20 million tonnes a year in the next five years from around 14.7 million tonnes now, which is valued at $15 billion.
While consumption of edible oils has been growing by 6.5 per cent per annum since 2000-01, production of oilseeds grew at the rate of 4.7 per cent.
As a result of huge and growing demand-supply mismatch, the country has to heavily on imports to meet over 50 per cent of domestic edible oil requirements.
During the November-September period of the current oil year, which will end this month, India's edible oil imports increased by 5 per cent to 8.4 million from 7.98 million tonnes during the corresponding period a year-ago.
In August this year, vegetable oil imports rose as much as 64 per cent to 1.07 million tonnes from 650,000 tonnes in August last year.
