Hike duty on edible oil imports, urges SEA Close.

NEW DELHI: With surge in import of refined palm oil, edible oil processors have urged finance minister Pranab Mukherjee to hike import duty on the commodity to 16.5 per cent from the existing 7.5 per cent to save the domestic industry from closing down.

India imports palm oil from Indonesia and Malaysia and soyabean oil from Brazil and Argentina. The country imports about 50 per cent of the domestic demand. There is zero duty on crude edible oils and 7.5 per cent on refined edible oils.

In a letter to Mukherjee, the Mumbai-based Solvent Extractors' Association of India has also sought increase in the tariff value on the refined edible oils to $1,200 per tonnes in line with the current market price.

"As feared by the industry, the month of February has seen a huge surge in import of refined palmolein to over 2.5 lakh tonnes against a monthly average of 1.10 lakh tonnes," SEA said and added that trend would continue in coming months.

Pointing out that the surge in imports of refined palm oil has seriously affected the industry, SEA has urged Mukherjee to "levy the same duty on import of refined edible oil which is the export duty being put on crude palm oil by Indonesia i.e. 16.5 per cent".

The association fears that in the next few months, palm oil imports would only be in the form of refined palmolein instead of crude palm oil due to huge duty advantage in export of refined products from Indonesia.

In September last year, Indonesia had changed export duty structure on various palm oils to discourage exports of crude palm oil and encourage shipments of refined palm oils.

"Permanent closure of the refining industry will jeopardise the lives of more 5,00,000 workers and investment of Rs 10,000 crore," SEA said in the letter.

The industry has a refining capacity of more than 12 million tonnes per annum at the ports itself as against the total imports of 8.5 million tonnes.

On the tariff value, the association said that the base rate should be increased as the effective duty on refined palmolein continues to be only 3 per cent as against the applicable rate of 7.5 per cent.

Source : economictimes.indiatimes.com