InfoSAWIT, MUMBAI – Palm oil imports in India could be increasing 26% to the highest level in 2022/23 that would end on 31 October because the recovery consumption and competitive price encouraged refinery to escalate their purchase in India as the biggest importer, as it was quoted from Reuters, Wednesday.

This would help to reduce palm oil supply in the two biggest palm oil producers – Indonesia and Malaysia and would have something to do with exchange price.

“Refineries escalated their purchase to the future festival. We knew that palm oil imports would be about 1,8 million metric tons for a couple of months,” CEO Patanjali Foods Ltd, Sanjeev Asthana said, as quoted from Bloomberg.

Sanjeev also mentioned, if India imported 1,8 million tons in a couple of months, the total delivery in 2022/2023 that would end on 31 October would reach 10 million tons, or surpass the previous highest level that reached 9,5 million tons in 2014/15.

In the first 10 months in 2022/23, India imported 14 million tons of vegetable oil that consisted of 8,2 million tons of palm oil, 3,2 million tons of soyoil, and 2,5 million tons of sunflower oil, as dealers predicted.

“Vegetable oil consumption decreased in the past three years, with the highest price record but burdened the use in 2022 and during Covid-19 pandemic in the previous two years,” Sanjeev said. (T2)