India Cuts Base Import Price of Palm Oil

The Government of India announced late Tuesday that it had reduced the benchmark import costs of crude and refined palm oil while increasing the price of crude soy oil. Every two weeks, the government revises the base import prices of edible oils, gold, and silver, and these prices are used to compute the amount of tax that an importer must pay.

India, the world's largest importer of edible oils, permitted duty-free imports of 2 million tonnes of soyoil last week. Except for gold and silver, all commodity base prices are in US dollars per tonne. The gold tariff is in dollars per ten grams, and the silver duty is in dollars per kilogram.

According to recently released data, the imports of vegetable oils, comprising edible and non-edible oils, declined by 13 percent to nearly 9.12 lakh tonnes during April. One of the major reasons behind this is said to be decreased import of crude palm oil. In a statement, the Solvent Extractors' Association of India (SEA) said, that import of vegetable oils in April this year stood at 9,11,846 tonnes compared to 10,53,347 tonnes in April 2021.