STC plans to import palm oil

State Trading Corporation has floated a global tender for importing 9,000 tonnes of crude palm oil and 2,000-3,000 tonnes of RBD palmolein within the next fortnight.

The tender would close on Thursday and a decision on it would be taken on the same day, the public sector trading firm said.

The shipment should reach here by November 15, STC added.

Govt agencies like STC, MMTC, PEC and NAFED are facing problems in importing edible oils due to high global prices.

They were finding it commercially unviable to import these oils without subsidy, therefore, they had been urging the government to give them subsidy.

NAFED, which wanted to import 15,000 tonnes of palm oil, had to cancel the tender on October 17 as there was no participation in the bidding process, though it had so far imported 51,000 tonnes of edible oils.

The cancellation of tender by NAFED came a week after MMTC's decision to call off a tender on October 10 for its 21,000 tonnes of palm group of oils. STC had also earlier floated a tender for edible oil import, and the PSU did not disclose whether it cancelled it or not.

Bidders are desisting from responding to the edible oil import tenders by PSUs as global prices are highly volatile and are on a rising trend. Therefore few enterprises are ready to commit such a large consignment.

Global suppliers are not taking seriously the tenders floated by these PSUs as they feel these companies just want to know the price trend, a trader said.