Aug 21, 2020
This pandemic saw a high consumption of edible oil during lockdown as people sought to kitchen resulting in the surge of demand, hence India reports highest import of edible oil in July 2020.
Solvent Extractors Association of India (SEA) reported the highest increase in import of edible oil in July. SEA has noted a jump of 13 per cent in edible oil import to 15.17 lakh tons on a year-on-year basis. The Mumbai based association said that the increase would compensate for the low imports during April- May period.
SEA mentioned that the soybean oil imports increased to 4.84 lakh tons in July from last year’s 3.19 lakh tons. While soybean oil imports surged 52% from a year ago, sunflower oil imports increased by 4% to 2,08,747 tons. Apart from this, the import of palm oil registered the most significant increase as its shipments were 8.24 lakh tons as against 8.12 lakh tons a year ago. However, RBD Palmolein imports have declined after imposition of restrictions on imports of refined palm oil in January 2020.
While India largely imports palm oil from Malaysia and Indonesia while demand for soy oil, sunflower oil is met by Brazil, Argentina, Ukraine, and Russia. The country bought 13.47 lakh tons of edible oils in July last year.
SEA has contradicted the SOPA’s proposal of imposing quantitative restrictions on the import of sunflower and soybean soil. It said that the limitation would flood the markets with palm oil, hammering the demand for domestic oilseeds.
Further, it noted that lowering soybean seed prices will harm the interests of the soybean growing farmer too. Suggesting the solution, it said that imposing import duty on all oils will ensure that farmers get a price above MSP from markets and government agencies thus a check is maintained over it.