NEW DELHI: India, the world’s biggest buyer of palm oil, wants to reduce its reliance on edible oil imports to 45% of its consumption by 2025 from 60% at present.
The country’s annual requirement of edible oils is 25 million tonnes, but domestic output is 10.50 million tonnes, extracted mainly from mustard, rapeseed, soybean, groundnut and sunflower.
“To increase domestic availability and reduce import dependency, a National Mission on Edible Oils (NMEO) is proposed for the next five years,” India’s Ministry of Commerce told Parliament on Friday (Feb 08).
The plan aims to increase the production of oilseeds from 30.88 million tonnes to 47.80 million tonnes annually by 2025.
It also involves increasing consumer awareness to keep per capita consumption at the current level of 19 kilogrammes.
“The oilseed production of the country has been growing impressively. Despite this, there exists a gap between the demand and supply of oilseeds, which has necessitated sizeable quantities of imports,” the Commerce Ministry said.
Import dependence will be reduced from 60% to 45% by raising the annual domestic edible oil production to 18 million tonnes.
According to industry sources, palm oil mainly from Indonesia and Malaysia constituted two-thirds of India’s total edible imports.
India last month put restrictions on refined palm oil imports, requiring importers to apply for permits, to support its domestic refining sector that had complained about cheaper imported refined products.
Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal said the notification was applicable to imports from all countries.
Earlier, some media reports suggested that India wanted to target Malaysian palm oil imports in protest against Malaysia’s criticism on the Kashmir issue and the country’s new citizenship law.
“At present, there is no proposal to impose a restriction on import of any item from Malaysia,” the Commerce Ministry told Parliament. – Feb 08, 2020, Bernama.
