India Must Restore Import Duty on Cooking Oils, Trade Group Says.

India, the biggest user of cooking oils after China, should restore taxes on imports to protect local oilseed farmers from cheaper overseas purchases of edible fat, a processors’ group said.

The government must impose 10 percent tax on imports of crude palm and soybean oils and 17.5 percent duty on refined cooking oils, said Sushil Goenka, president of the Solvent Extractors’ Association of India, in a pre-budget petition to the finance ministry.

India’s cooking oil imports climbed 7 percent to a record 9.24 million metric tons, valued at 380 billion rupees ($8.4 billion), in the year ended Oct. 31, the group said last week.

India relies on overseas supplies to meet more than half of its edible oil demand and palm oil makes up almost 80 percent of the nation’s purchases. The government scrapped a duty on crude palm oil in 2008 and ended a 20 percent tax on crude soybean oil in March 2009 to boost supplies and cool prices.

India buys palm oil from Indonesia and Malaysia, the two biggest producers, and soybean oil from Argentina and Brazil.

Source : bloomberg.com