Malaysia confident of good demand for palm oil in India

08-Oct-2024 05:49 PM

Kuala Lumpur. Malaysia expects that despite the 20 percent increase in basic import duty on edible oils by the Government of India, good quantity of palm oil will continue to be imported there. Malaysia's Plantation and Commodities Minister has said that India is the world's largest buyer of vegetable oils and the need for import of palm oil will remain there. There is no issue in this. The demand for palm oil remains good. In fact, the price of palm oil has risen to above 4000 ringgit per tonne, but still its demand has not decreased.

The benchmark futures price of crude palm oil (CPO) for January 2025 delivery on the Kuala Lumpur-based Bursa Malaysia Derivatives (BMD) exchange rose to 4226 ringgit per tonne. Similarly, the Bursa Malaysia Plantation Index has also risen by 3.6 percent during the current year. According to the Plantation Minister, considering the situation so far during the current year, the total production of palm oil in Malaysia is expected to increase to above 190 lakh tonnes, which will be the highest production since the year 2000. During the eight months from January to August 2024, about 126 lakh tonnes of palm oil was produced in Malaysia, which was 10.2 percent more than the production of the same period last year. According to the Minister, due to the stable and definite policies of the government and the resolve to overcome the major challenges, the process of increase in palm oil production continues. The problem of workers has also been resolved to a great extent. Last month, the Director General of the Malaysian Palm Oil Board (Ampob) had said that although the Government of India has decided to increase the import duty on other edible oils including palm oil by 20 percent to protect the interests of its oilseed producing farmers, it will not have any significant impact on the competitive ability of Malaysian palm oil in the Indian market and India will continue to buy Malaysian palm oil regularly.