The Chinese government has reduced its forecast for edible oil production for the current marketing year due to a reduction in oilseed imports, AgriCensus quoted from the monthly update to China’s Agriculture Supply and Demand Estimates (Casde).
China is now expected to produce 28M tonnes of edible oil during the 2021/22 crop year, a reduction of 150,000 tonnes from the previous 28.15M tonnes estimate, according to the 12 July report.
“(It is) mainly because edible oilseed imports dropped, leading to a downgrade in edible vegetable oil production,” the report said.
However, “the obvious increase of domestic rapeseed production limits the decline of edible oil output,” it added.
Chinese government analysts have maintained an unchanged estimate for edible oil imports of 7.43M tonnes.
Of the total, imports for palm oil and soyabean oil were cut by 300,000 tonnes and 170,000 tonnes from their previous outlooks to 3.7M tonnes and 630,000 tonnes, respectively.
Consumption of edible oil was expected to be stable at 36.34M tonnes.
Accordingly, the year-end balance between supply and demand for 2021/22 edible oil dropped 150,000 tonnes from the previous estimates to minus 1.18M tonnes.
For soyabeans, China’s Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs (MARA) kept its forecasts for imports and demand for the new crop year at 95.2M tonnes and 19.48M tonnes, respectively.
Soyabean consumption for 2022/23 remained at 112.87M tonnes, leaving the year-end balance between supply and demand unchanged at 1.66M tonnes.
