India’s palm oil imports in February dropped 1.1% from a year earlier to 751,703 tonnes as soyoil imports jumped, a leading trade body said on Friday.
Soyoil imports surged 65% to 220,376 tonnes in February, while sunflower oil imports eased 3.7% to 200,358 tons, the Solvent Extractors’ Association of India (SEA) said in a statement.
India is the world’s biggest importer of edible oils. Its total vegetable oil imports rose 7.4% to 1.24 million tons in February, it added.
The country’s refined palm oil imports in February jumped 19.1% to 241,101 tons as a reduction in import tax made it more attractive than crude palm oil, the SEA said.
India buys palm oil from Indonesia and Malaysia, with its soyoil mainly imported from Argentina and Brazil, and purchases sunflower oil from Ukraine.
In the first four months of the 2018/19 marketing year ending October, India has imported 4.61 million tonnes of palm oil, down 1% from a year ago, it said.
