* Incentives to farmers vital for enhancing edible oil production: PVOMA

08/05/2010 (Daily Times, Pakistan), Karachi - Country’s edible oil products import bill stood at $1.24 billion in 2009, which shows an increase of around 4.4 percent compared to imports in 2008, Pakistan Vegetable Oil Mills Association (PVOMA) said on Friday.

“We imported around 1.9 million tonnes of edible oil products, that catered about 76 percent of the total country’s edible oil consumption”, a PVOMA senior member, Nasir Ibrahim said. Nasir said the country’s demand for palm oil usually increases around 6 percent during October-January every year on higher demand due to cold weather and increase in use of palm oil products”.

The international price of RBD reached $798 per metric tonne while the price of palm oil touched around $821.34 per metric tonne.

The country consumes around 2.1 million tonnes edible oil very year out of which 0.59 million tonnes is contributed by the local growers while the remaining is imported to bridge the demand-supply, he added.

“Substantial amount of our valued foreign exchange is spent on importing edible oil, which not only brings hardship for the people but also burdens the national economy”.

He asked the government to rationalise the customs duty and other taxes on imported edible oil.

He said due to higher import cost, the manufacturers of vegetable ghee and cooking oil were unable to pass on the maximum benefit in case of any slight decline as they were facing multiple problems including power and gas loadshedding and production loss.

He said the ITP duty should be increased or decreased in proportion to the changes in the price of imported edible oils in the international market.

Nasir said the rates of sales tax levied at 16 percent and withholding and FED tax charged at the rate of 2 percent on the imported palm oil should also be lessen.

Presently, he said the total duties and taxes paid by vanaspati manufacturers were around Rs 34,500 per tonne.

The PVOMA proposes the government to fix the FED on imported edible oils at the level of C&F prices of RBD palm oil as July 2006.

Imports are made under Malaysian Palm Oil Concessionary Trade Agreement (MPOCTA), like free-trade agreement (FTA), he added. The sunflower growers asked the government to increase the support price of the produce to Rs 2,200 per maund claiming that in 2007, the price was Rs 1,800 per maund.

“It is astonishing that Ministry of Food and Agriculture (MINFA) is not aware the situation and decided to set the current sunflower price which is Rs 2,000”, chief Agri Forum, Ibrahim Mughal said.

He said during the past three years, the cost of production including price of seed, fertilizer and other inputs have risen around 25 percent.

“How can a sunflower farmer afford such cost, as growers and small farmers are hesitating to cultivate sunflower crop because of poor supporting price of their crop and this area is also needed immediate attention”.

He said sunflower seeds contain about 42 percent high quality edible oil and this crop is grown in an area of over 260,000 hectares in Pakistan with a production of over 3,79,000 tonnes sunflower seed and 1420 kg per hectare yield.

This is low as compared to major sunflower growing countries like China, United States and Argentina but our per acre production is better than the developing countries, he said. He said farmers could enhance their crop double-fold this year if they are provided appropriate support as well as sufficient support price.

Solvent Extractors Association of Pakistan also supported sunflower growers in the country and demanded for maximum support price to sunflower farmers in order to increase yield during the season.

According to an official in Ministry of Food and Agriculture, the government was spending on sunflower research and motivating the farmers’ community to make the country self-sufficient in edible oil through increase in cultivation of this crop.