Australian Lentil Imports to India Drop Sharply After March

12-Aug-2025 05:47 PM

Mumbai. India imported a good amount of lentils from Australia in the half year from October 2024 to March 2025, but its pace started slowing down from April.

Firstly, the arrival of new domestic crop started and secondly, a 10 percent customs duty was imposed on its import. Due to the heavy imports earlier, the supply and availability of lentils in the domestic market became easy and the prices softened a bit.

The report of the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) shows that India imported 1,26,658 tonnes of lentils from Australia in the quarter of October-December 2024 and 1,66,410 tonnes in the quarter of January-March 2025, while in the quarter of April-June 2025,

this import came down to only 7776 tonnes. Under this, only 1125 tonnes of lentils were imported in April while 2635 tonnes were imported in May and 4016 tonnes in June. In this way, a total of 3,00,844 tonnes of lentils were imported from Australia to India in the nine months from October 2024 to June 2025.

The ABS report shows that in the first 9 months of the current marketing season i.e. from October 2024 to June 2025, a total of 8,92,988 tonnes of lentils were exported from Australia, in which the shipment to India alone accounted for more than one-third.

After this, the maximum shipment of 3,38,154 tonnes was made to Bangladesh, 1,13,287 tonnes to Sri Lanka, 39,332 tonnes to the United Arab Emirates (UAE), 66,213 tonnes to Pakistan and 20,056 tonnes to Nepal.

These figures clearly indicate that more than 90 percent of lentil exports from Australia are destined for South Asian countries, especially the Indian subcontinent.

Apart from this, small quantities of lentils were also exported to many other countries, including Egypt (11,042 tonnes).