InfoSAWIT, MUMBAI – Vegetable oil imports in India in August 2024 decreased one fourth to the previous period. It happened for the abundant staock and negative margin and encouraged the factories to minimize their purchase of tropical oil, as five traders mentioned on Tuesday.

As the biggest vegetable oil importer in the world, the decreasing purchase by India would escalate palm oil stocks in some main producer countries, such as, Indonesia and Malaysia and would potentially press reference price in the stocks markets.

The traders estimated, palm oil imports in India got decreased 27% in August to be 791.000 metric tons to July.

“In July, the imports surpassed the needs locally and the factories minimize to get vegetable oil import this month,” Sandeep Bajoria, CEO Sunvin Group, a vegetable oil trader company, said, as InfoSAWIT quoted from Hellenicshippingnews, Wednesday (11/9/2024).

He also mentioned, the increasing palm oil price recently, made it equal to soyoil price and there was no incentive to purchase palm oil.

In general, palm oil was cheaper than other vegetable oil, such as, soyoil but in the September delivery, palm oil was at the same price with other vegetable oils.

Rajesh Patel, the managing parter in vegetable oil trader and broker - GGN Research, said that the distillation margin of palm oil was in negative zone in August. This forced the buyers to minimize their purchase.

On the other hand, soyoil imports got increased 16% in India to be 456.000 metric tons – the highest numbers for more than two years, as the traders mentioned.

rapeseed oil in the country got increased more than 8% in the past month and some distillation started mixing rapeseed oil with soyoil for being relatively cheap, a vegetable oil trader from Jaipur, said.

Sunflower oil imports got decreased 21% in August to be 288.000 metric tons.

The decreasing palm oil and sunflower oil imports made vegetable oil imports in India get decreased 17% to be 1,53 million tons, as the traders estimated.

To protect the smallholders that got impacts from the cheaper seed oils, India is still considering to escalate vegetable oil import taxes, as two government’s officials mentioned.

India imported palm oil namely from Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand, while soyoil and sunflower oil imports were from Argentina, Brazil, Russia, and Ukraine.

Industrial association, Solvent Extractors’ Association of India (SEA) would be releasing the official data about vegetable oil imports in August by the midst of September 2024. (T2)