India’s import duty on crude sunflower oil will increase from zero to 5.5% from 1 April, Fastmarkets reported on 1 March.
The import duty increase was applicable on up to 2M tonnes of crude sunflower oil under the tariff rate quota (TRQ) allowance for the 2023/24 season, the report said.
The TRQ is a volume of imports that can enter India at a specified or zero duty.
A similar decision was taken in January on crude soyabean oil, which also had a duty-free import quota of 2M tonnes for 2022/23 and 2023/24, Latestly news agency wrote on 1 March.
The world’s largest vegetable oil importer had set a monthly sunflower oil import record in January, taking 459,000 tonnes – more than twice the volume of imports in December, FastMarkets wrote.
Total vegetable oil imports from November 2022 to October 2023 was forecast at 15M tonnes, up 6.4% from a year earlier, while sunflower oil imports would increase by 33% to 2.55M tonnes, it said.
February US Department of Agriculture (USDA) estimates pegged India’s 2022/23 import rates as 2M tonnes for sunflower oil, a rise of 5%; 9M tonnes for palm oil, an increase of 12.5%; and 3.15M tonnes for soyabean oil, a fall of 25.5%.
