NEW DELHI: Palm oil purchases by India fell in December, the first decline in 2015, as record cooking oil inventories prompted traders and refiners in the world’s largest buyer to slow shipments.
Imports dropped 5.8% to 788,078 metric tons last month from a year earlier, the Solvent Extractors’ Association of India said in an e-mailed statement on Monday. That compares with the 770,000 metric ton median estimate in a Bloomberg survey last week. Total vegetable oil purchases, including those for industrial use, increased 24% to 1.42 million tons in December, it said.
Stockpiles surged to an all-time high after traders boosted imports on concern that the first back-to-back shortfall in monsoon rain in three decades will shrink India’s oilseed harvest. Palm oil in Kuala Lumpur jumped 6% in December to cap the best year since 2010 as the strongest El Nino in almost two decades parches crops in Southeast Asia and trims record stockpiles in Malaysia.
Vegetable oil stockpiles jumped to 2.5 million tons on Jan 1, a record for a second month, compared with a monthly requirement of 1.6 million tons, according to the extractors’ association. Soybean oil imports climbed more than five fold to 490,718 tons in December from a year earlier while sunflower oil purchases fell 32% to 102,740 tons, the association said. Canola oil purchases were 25,609 tons, it said.
India’s vegetable oil imports may climb to a record for a second year, increasing to 15.2 million tons in the 12 months that began Nov. 1 from 14.6 million tons, Sandeep Bajoria, chief executive officer of Sunvin Group, said last month.
The country’s monsoon-sown oilseed harvest is seen declining 11% to 12.6 million tons in 2015-16 from a year earlier, the Central Organisation for Oil Industry & Trade said in October.
