14/8/06 NEW DELHI (Reuters) - The government raised base import prices of crude palm oil and soybean oil on Monday.

The price of crude palm oil was raised to $481 per tonne from $447, while that of crude soybean oil was raised marginally to $572 per tonne from $570.

India, the world's leading edible oils importer, buys palm oils from Malaysia and Indonesia and soyoil from Argentina and Brazil.

It fixes base prices to calculate customs duties and prevent any loss of revenue due to under-invoicing by importers. Traders pay duties on the base value irrespective of the prices paid for the oil.

The price of RBD Palm Oil was increased to $506 per tonne from $476, while that of others Palm Oil was increased to $494 per tonne from $462.

Crude palmolein was increased to $509 per tonne from $481, RBD Palmolein to $512 per tonne from $484 and others palmolein to $511 per tonne from $483.

Last week, India cut import duties on some edible oil products to help check inflation.

Duties on crude palm oil and palmolein were reduced to 70 percent from 80 percent, while the duty on RBD palm oil and palmolein was slashed to 80 percent from 90 percent.

"The reduction in customs duty last week and the revision in base import prices today have more or less squared up each other," said B.V. Mehta, executive director of the Solvent Extractors Association of India.

He urged the government to direct state-run NAFED to offload edible oil stocks in the market to bring domestic prices down.

India currently imports 60 to 65 percent of edible oils in the form of palm oils and the remaining as soy oils.

It is the world's fourth-largest vegetable oil producer but imports 40 percent of the 11 million tonnes consumed annually in the nation of more than a billion people.

The country's edible oil imports are likely to decline to about 4.8 million tonnes in the year to September 2006 from about 5 million tonnes a year earlier because of higher domestic output, traders said.