June vegetable oil imports dip 29 per cent

PUNE: India's vegetable oil imports declined 29% year-on-year to 11.47 lakh tonnes in June 2026 from 16.16 lakh tonnes in the same month last year. On a month-on-month basis, edible oil imports fell 17% from May 2026, indicating lower arrivals in the month.

The decline was primarily driven by a sharp fall in palm oil imports, which dropped 10.5% from the previous month as the price gap between palm oil and other edible oils narrowed significantly. Soyabean oil imports also fell 23%.

A sharp 18-20% year-on-year increase in international prices of major cooking oils, driven by their diversion for biofuel production and an 11% depreciation of the Indian rupee also weighed on imports.


"The June imports have declined as we had enough stocks with us. Our imports were high during the last few months," said Sandeep Bajoria, CEO of Sunvin Group, a commodity trading company.

Although it was not the festive season, India had consistently imported higher quantities of cooking oils from December 2025 to May 2026 due to geopolitical uncertainties.

"This decline was caused by the vanishing price discount of palm oil against soft oils like soybean oil," the Solvent Extractors' Association (SEA) said in a statement.

Despite the decline in June, cumulative imports in the first eight months of the 2025-26 oil year (November 2025 to June 2026) remained higher than in the corresponding period of the previous year.

Cumulative edible oil imports in the period rose to 103.88 lakh tonnes from 97.29 lakh tonnes a year earlier, an increase of 7%.

"The drop in Indian buying of cooking oils is a ripple effect of simultaneous biofuel mandates introduced by Indonesia, Malaysia and the United States. These policies are pulling millions of tonnes of vegetable oils out of the food economy and into the fuel economy, driving up global spot prices," the SEA said.