India’s Leading Palm Oil Importer Forecasts a 26% Increase in Imports, Targeting a Record 10 Million Tons

On Wednesday, the country’s leading palm oil buyer informed Reuters that India’s palm oil imports for the marketing year 2022/23, ending on October 31, are expected to surge by 26% to reach a record high. This surge is attributed to improvements in consumption and competitive prices, encouraging refiners to boost their purchases.

Support for Inventory Reduction and Benchmark Deals: This increase in palm oil imports could assist the top-producing countries, Indonesia and Malaysia, in reducing their inventories and supporting benchmark price commitments.

Refiners are increasing their purchases in order to get ready for the upcoming festivals. According to Sanjeev Asthana, CEO of Patanjali Foods Ltd. (PAFO.NS), we can expect imports of around 1.8 million metric tons over the next two months.

According to him, the overall sales for the 2022–23 marketing year, which ends on October 31st, will surpass the previous high of 9.5 million tons generated in 2014–15 if India purchases 1.8 million tons during the following two months.

Traders claim that during the first ten months of 2022–2023, India imported 14 million tons of edible oils, including 8.2 million tons of palm oil, 2.5 million tons of sunflower oil, and 3.2 million lots of soy oil.

According to him, COVID-19 and record-high prices have had an impact on the previous two years and record-low prices have had an impact on the last three years’ consumption of edible oil in India.

We anticipate a 2%–4% increase in consumption this year, he said.

India imports enough edible oil to meet more than two thirds of its needs.

According to Rajesh Patel, managing partner of GGN Research, an edible oil trader and broker, an increase in consumption would also result in greater imports of sunflower oil this year, pushing the overall imports of edible oils up by 18% to a record 16.5 million tons.

Due to the oil’s lower price than soyoil, he predicted that sunflower oil imports might increase by 44% from a year earlier to a record 2.8 million tons.

He noted that soyoil imports, which reached a record high of 4.1 million tons last year, may decline by 11% to 3.7 million tons this year.

While importing soy and sunflower oil from Argentina, Brazil, Russia, and Ukraine, India mostly purchases palm oil from Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand.

With inputs from Reuters

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