India’s vegetable oil imports increased 33 per cent to 1.1 million tonnes in April mainly on higher shipments of palm oil.
The import of vegetable oil during the same month last year was 832,000 tonnes, according to industry data.
“Import of vegetable oils during April is reported at 11,08,678 tonnes compared with 8,32,760 tonnes in April 2014, up by 33 per cent,” Solvent Extractors’ Association said in a statement.
Meanwhile, during November-April period, vegetable oils imports increased by 25 per cent to 64.61 lakh tonnes compared with 51.64 lakh tonnes in the year-ago period.
Oil year runs from November to October.
Of total imports in November-April period, imports of edible oils stood at 6.3 million tonnes and non-edible oils at 112,000 tonnes.
"Due to nil export duty on palm products during the first five months of the current oil year by Indonesia and Malaysia...pushed the export of palm products to India to reduce burgeoning stock held by the exporting countries," SEA added.
Another reason for higher imports was increase in prices of soyabean in domestic market and lesser realisation for oil and soyabean meal in export market, resulted in lower crushing and lesser oil availability in the country, it said.
In December last year, the government hiked import duty on both crude and refined edible oils by 5 per cent.
The customs duty on crude oil has been increased to 7.5 per cent from 2.5 per cent earlier, while the duty on refined edible oil has been raised to 15 per cent from 10 per cent.
India's vegetable oil imports rose 12 per cent to an all-time high of 11.82 million tonnes in the 2013-14 oil marketing year ended October on rise in domestic consumption and low rates of cooking oils in global markets.
The country imports about 60 per cent of the annual domestic demand of vegetable oils
