Vegetable oil imports may hit record: Analyst

MUMBAI: India's vegetable oil imports could rise more than 4 per cent in the year to October 2014 to stand at a record 11.13 million tonnes, driven by a jump in overseas purchases of sunflower oil, a leading edible oil analyst said on Monday.

The world's biggest importer of edible oils fills more than half its demand through imports, consisting mainly of palm oil sourced from Indonesia and Malaysia. It also buys soyoil from Argentina and Brazil, and sunflower oil from Ukraine.

Overseas purchases of sunflower oil could rise by 23 per cent to 1.2 million tonnes, analyst Dorab Mistry said in a presentation on Monday.

India's sunflower oil imports in November surged 153 per cent from a year ago as the gap between crude sunflower and refined palm oil narrowed to $115 per tonne, compared to $380 at the same time last year, data compiled by Solvent Extractors' Association of India (SEA) showed.

The south Asian country's imports of palm oil would remain largely steady around 8.3 million tonnes, Mistry said.