Edible Oil Imports Likely to Touch 15.50 Lakh Tonnes in July

04-Aug-2025 11:22 AM

Mumbai. The performance of import of edible oil (especially palm oil) remained very weak from January to April 2025, but from May onwards, there were signs of improvement in it.

Data from a leading industry body - Solvent Extractors Association of India (C) shows that during June 2025, the import of edible oils in the country increased to around 15.30 lakh tonnes. With this, the total import of edible oils in the first eight months of the current marketing season reached 92 lakh tonnes, which was less than the gross import of 101 lakh tonnes in the same period of the previous season (November-2023-June-2024).

Under this, there was a huge decline in the import of palm oil in particular. The edible oil import data of the association for the month of July will be released around mid-August, but in the meantime, the estimates made by industry and trade sector analysts show that during the month under review, the total import of edible oils in the country increased to around 15.50 lakh tonnes, which is the highest level for any month of the current season.

This includes import of 8.50 lakh tonnes of palm oil (crude and refined), 4.90 lakh tonnes of crude degummed soybean oil and 1.90 lakh tonnes of crude sunflower oil.

Apart from this, import of 75 thousand tonnes of refined category soybean oil, and 4-4 thousand tonnes of palm oil and sunflower oil, totaling 83 thousand tonnes of edible oil, has also been estimated from Nepal.

Under the SAFTA treaty, edible oils are imported to India from Nepal free of cost. It is known that palm oil is imported to India mainly from Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand, soybean oil is imported from Argentina and Brazil and sunflower oil is imported from Russia, Ukraine and Argentina.