India's edible oil imports, including palm oil, may rise 5.4 percent to 11.7 million tonnes in 2014/15 as a weak monsoon hurts domestic oilseeds production, an industry expert said.
Higher purchases by the world's leading cooking oil importer should support Malaysian palm oil futures that have shed almost 7 percent so far this year.
"Considering current monsoon progress, I don't think next year there will be any meaningful growth in local edible oil supplies, but demand will rise," said Govindbhai Patel, a trade expert from India's western city of Rajkot, at a regional palm oil conference in Mumbai on Thursday.
India's annual rains arrived five days late on the southern coast, and covered half of the country four days behind schedule on June 19, but since then it has failed to spread to soybean areas of central India.
Production of the main summer oilseed crop would depend on the quantity of rainfall in the next two months, said Patel, who has been in the edible oil trade for over three decades.
He expects India to import on an average 1.05 million tonnes of edible oil, including 700,000 tonnes of palm oil, each month until October.
India mainly buys palm oils from Indonesia and Malaysia, and small quantities of soyoil from Latin America and sunflower oil from Black Sea nations.
"Imports would rise in next five months as soybean sowing is getting delayed," Dorab Mistry, a noted London-based trade analyst, said on the sidelines of the conference.
Traders said the delay was primarily due to the slow spread of the monsoon rains over the growing areas of the main producing state of Madhya Pradesh.
Source:- economictimes.indiatimes.com
No comments:
Post a Comment