Permission to import edible oils, maize and milk products under TRQ

27-Jun-2024 12:15 PM

New Delhi. In its serious effort to control food inflation in the domestic sector, the Central Government has taken an important decision and has allowed the import of a certain quantity of milk products,

some categories of edible oils and maize under the Tariff Rate Quota (TRQ) system. Under this, conditional approval has been given to import 1.50 lakh tonnes of sunflower oil or safflower oil, 5 lakh tonnes of maize, 1.50 lakh tonnes of refined rapeseed oil and 10 thousand tonnes of milk products (milk powder).

For the import of these products, the government has assigned the responsibility to some cooperative and subordinate agencies / firms, which include National Dairy Development Board (NDDB), National Cooperative Dairy Federation (NCDM) and National Agricultural Cooperative Marketing Federation of India (NAFED). It is worth mentioning that under the Tariff Rate Quota system, the import of goods is done either at concessional duty or at zero duty.

According to trade analysts, there was no need to allow the import of sunflower oil and refined oil at concessional duty because already the prices of oilseed oil are under pressure due to the import of cheap edible oils in large quantities. Now duty-free import may further increase the pressure on its price.

Although India is the largest producer of liquid milk in the world, yet citing tremendous demand and limited supply, recently leading dairy companies increased the price of milk and milk products. This increased the difficulties of the common people.

As far as maize is concerned, there was a demand to allow its import under TRQ. Due to heavy demand in the poultry and ethanol industry, there is an atmosphere of ups and downs in the price of maize. Only import of traditional or non-GM maize is allowed in the country.