14/08/2022 (Taipei Times) - India’s palm oil imports last month fell 10 percent from a month earlier, as refiners ramped up purchases of rival soy oil to take advantage of New Delhi’s move to allow duty-free imports of the vegetable oil to calm all-time high prices, a trade body said on Friday.

Higher soy oil purchases by the world’s biggest edible oil importer would support US soy oil prices, but dent rival palm oil’s share in Indian buying and force Malaysian and Indonesian sellers to offer discounts to regain the market share, traders said.

India’s palm oil imports last month fell to 530,420 tonnes from 590,921 tonnes a month earlier, the Solvent Extractors’ Association of India (SEA) said in a statement.

Soy oil imports jumped 125 percent from a month earlier to a record 519,566 tonnes, while sunflower oil imports rose 30 percent to 155,300 tonnes.

India in late May allowed duty-free imports of 2 million tonnes each of soy oil and sunflower oil for the current and next fiscal years ending March 31, as part of efforts to keep a lid on local edible oil prices.

Through the end of June, soy oil’s premium over palm oil was less than US$150 per tonne, but since palm oil attracts a 5.5 percent import tax, palm oil was effectively more expensive for Indian buyers, brokers said.

However, the gap between soy oil and palm oil has widened to more than US$350 per tonne in the past few weeks, making palm oil purchases more attractive for refiners, the SEA said.

“In August, palm oil imports could rise above 700,000 tonnes. There was huge buying in July after prices were corrected,” a Mumbai-based dealer at a global trading firm said.

Malaysian palm oil prices last month fell to their lowest in more than a year.

Other commodities:

‧Gold for December delivery rose US$8.30 to US$1,815.50 an ounce, rising 1.36 percent from a week earlier.

‧Silver for September delivery rose US$0.35 to US$20.70 an ounce, a weekly increase of 4.33 percent, while September copper fell US$0.04 to US$3.67 a pound, up 3.38 percent on the week.

Additional reporting by AP

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