Palm oil imports rose marginally to 7,29,536 tonnes in April this year on sharp jump in shipments of refined palm oil, industry body Solvent Extractors Association (SEA) said today.
India, the world's leading vegetable oil buyer, had imported 7,25,088 tonnes of palm oils in April 2015.
Palm oils make up more than 65 per cent of the country's total vegetable oil imports. Of late, there has been a sharp increase in the import of RBD palmolein.
"The alarming increase in import of RBD palmolein (refined palm oil) is seriously hurting the domestic refining industry. This situation has arisen due to the fact that currently the landed cost of RBD palmolein is lesser than crude palm oil (CPO)," SEA said in a statement.
Due to increase in import of refined palm oils, the domestic refining industry is facing severe crisis of under utilisation of capacity and is on the verge of closure, it said.
Refined palm oil is cheaper to import because the export tax imposed on it by Indonesia/Malaysia is more than CPO.
"Therefore, the duty differential in India has to be made variable to be in line with the differential duty prevailing in Malaysia and Indonesia and justify to increase in duty difference between crude and refined vegetable oils from 7.5 per cent to 15 per cent," the SEA said.
Among palm oil products, import of RBD palmolein rose by 74 per cent to 3,25,902 tonnes in April 2016 from 1,87,534 tonnes in the year-ago period.
The shipments of CPO, however, fell by 26 per cent to 3,92,106 tonnes in April from 5,30,557 tonnes in the year-ago period, while the import of crude palm kernel oil (CPKO) rose by 65 per cent to 11,528 tonnes from 6,997 tonnes in the said period.
Among soft oils, import of soyabean oil increased by over 86 per cent to 3,48,195 tonnes in April from 1,86,849 tonnes in the year-ago period, while sunflower oil and rapeseed oil shipments stood at 1,00,750 tonnes and 51,087 tonnes, respectively, in the said period.
The import of RBD palmolein have risen sharply to 13.23 lakh tonnes in the first six months of the current oil year ending October 2016 from 4.92 lakh tonnes in the year-ago period.
"RBD palmolein imports have replaced import of CPO and expected to increase further in the coming months," SEA said.
Country's total vegetable oil imports increased by 12 per cent to 12.42 lakh tonnes in April this year from 11.08 lakh tonnes in the year-ago period.
Total stock at ports and in pipelines increased to 24.40 lakh tonnes in April 2016, while the country's monthly requirement is about 16.5 lakh tonnes, SEA said.
India imports palm oil mainly from Indonesia and Malaysia and a small quantity of crude soft oils, including soyabean oil from Latin America. Sunflower oil is imported from Ukraine and Russia.
