4/4/07 ( The Financial Express) JAKARTA, -India will cut back on its crude palm oil (CPO) imports from Indonesia, and may even switch to other vegetable oils if the island country exports its refined palm oil instead of its CPO.

“If Indonesia followed Malaysia’s example of stopping its CPO exports, and starts exporting its refined palm oil, India would seek other vegetable oils like soybean oil,” BV Mehta, executive director of the Indian Solvent Extractors Association (ISEA) said here on Tuesday. He said that each year India  would need an additional import of 500,000 tonne of vegetable oils per year to meet its increasing consumption and population increase by 18 million each year.
 
“Of India’s total vegetable oil consumption of 12 million tonne, 12%, or 3 million tonne, consisted of palm oil,” he said. Therefore, each year India imported a great deal of palm oil from Indonesia, so that Indonesia is playing a crucial role in meeting that country’s palm oil needs. “We need crude palm oil for processing further by our industries. Therefore do not produce products which the buyers do not need,” Mehta warned Jakarta. He made the statement in response to a question what impact India would have if the Indonesian government reduce or limit its CPO exports, because Indonesia wished to develop its own downstream industry. “Indonesia has become the biggest CPO supplier to India.

Indonesia’s CPO exports continued to increase each year compared to Malaysia, because Malaysia had been exporting its refined palm oil which we do not need,” he said.

—PTI