The Indian government has taken steps to ease the burden on consumers by exempting customs duty and agricultural infrastructure and development cess on crude soyabean oil and crude sunflower seed oil.
This measure, which applies to both degummed and non-degummed soyabean oils, will be in place from May 11 to June 30, subject to the conditions of tariff rate quota authorization (TRQ).
TRQ refers to a quota on the volume of imports that come into India at a specific or nil duty. Once the quota is achieved, the normal tariff applies to additional imports. The government discontinued imports of crude soyabean and sunflower seed oils under TRQ in January and March, respectively.
To ease domestic prices, the government had earlier exempted customs duty and agriculture infrastructure development cess on the yearly import of 20 lakh metric tonnes of crude soybean oil and crude sunflower oil each.
India is the world's second-largest consumer and the number one importer of vegetable oil. It meets 60% of its requirement through imports, with a significant portion being palm oil and its derivatives imported from Indonesia and Malaysia.
According to a release by the Solvent Extractors' Association of India, an apex industry body, its members were advised to lower retail and wholesale prices to align with prevailing global markets for the benefit of consumers.
The association stated that its members had responded positively and had begun to announce a decrease in the maximum retail price and wholesale price of their brand of edible oils. The release was made on May 5.
The Indian edible oil industry primarily consumes mustard, palm, soybean, and sunflower-derived edible oils. Earlier, the industry body had a meeting with food and public distribution secretary Sanjeev Chopra to discuss the prevailing edible oil prices.
