Mumbai: India’s vegetable oil imports in November, the first month of the 2009-10 oil marketing year, has surged by 36%, largely due to low oilseed production and poor carryover stocks.
Traders said such a huge jump in edible oil imports at a time when local oilseed crushing is set to gain momentum shows that processors fear that oilseeds supply will get scarce in the coming months.
As per the latest data from the Solvent Extractors’ Association of India (SEA), both edible and non-edible oils import for November 2009 was 753,966 tonne as against 555,342 tonne in November 2008, consisting of 712,677 tonne of edible oils and 41,289 tonne of non-edible oils.
Country’s total import of edible oil during November 2008 to October 2009 is reported at 8.18 million tonne, as compared to 5.60 million tonne last year, up 46%.
In November 2009, import of RBD Palmolein was around 112,604 tonne compared to 87,539 tonne in October 2009 and 137,959 tonne in November 2008.
Share of refined oil is 16%, while crude oil is 84%.
“If we analyse the data, the share of palm oil in India’s total edible oil imports is increasing rapidly due to the simple fact that it takes almost eight days to import and is cheaper. Monsoon this year has been a threat to the farmers and its unfortunate that inspite good soya crop in India , the crushing margins are negative and farmers are incurring losses. This trend has been there for past three months now,” said KN Rahaman, deputy research head, Way2Wealth Securities.
In November 2009, palm oil import was reported at 577,790 tonne compared to 509,033 tonne in November 2008.
Soft oil imports also increased drastically to 134,887 tonne compared to 9,999 tonne in November 2008. Crude palm oil import for the country in Nov 09 stood at 450,252 tonne as against 363,578 tonne year ago.
Also India ‘s crude soyoil import was reported at 78,000 tonne as compared to zero import in Nov 08. The country also imported 55,688 tonne of sunflower oil in November as against 8,000 tonne year ago.
“Sooner or later edible oil prices are certain to shoot up, either domestically or internationally. Within next three months prices would go up by 15-20%. Vegetable oil import for India would always be higher due to increasing consumption and bad Kharif crop this year. As mustard sowing has not been up to the mark yet, it (the pace of imports) would all now depend on how rabi oilseed crop does,” added Rahaman.
India’s imports of vegetable oil, including edible oils, non-edible oils and vanaspati-in 2008-09 (Nov-Oct) touched an all-time high of 8.66 million tonne, up 37% from 6.31 million tonne in the previous year and is valued at around Rs 28,000 crore and Rs 25,000 crore respectively, SEA had said.
India buys mainly palm oils from Indonesia, Malaysia and a small quantity of soyoil from Argentina and Brazil as its local edible oil production is just half of its annual edible oil demand of around 12 million tonne.
Source : Financial Express