India's Feb palm oil imports ease as soyoil purchase jumps

Malaysian palm oil futures fell more than 1 percent on Friday, retreating from the previous session's seven-month high, hindered by a stronger ringgit and losses in U.S. soyoil on the Chicago Board of Trade.

MUMBAI: India's palm oil imports in February dropped 1.1 percent from a year earlier to 751,703 tonnes as soyoil imports jumped, a leading trade body said on Friday.

Soyoil imports surged 65 percent to 220,376 tonnes in February, while sunflower oil imports eased 3.7 percent to 200,358 tonnes, the Solvent Extractors' Association of India (SEA) said in a statement https://bit.ly/2HkBBmV.

India is the world's biggest importer of edible oils. Its total vegetable oil imports rose 7.4 percent to 1.24 million tonnes in February, it added.

The country's refined palm oil imports in February jumped 19.1 percent to 241,101 tonnes as a reduction in import tax made it more attractive than crude palm oil, the SEA said.

India buys palm oil from Indonesia and Malaysia, with its soyoil mainly imported from Argentina and Brazil, and purchases sunflower oil from Ukraine.

In the first four months of the 2018/19 marketing year ending October, India has imported 4.61 million tonnes of palm oil, down 1 percent from a year ago, it said. - Reuters