India's annual vegetable oil imports in December fell 4.4 percent on high global prices, a trade body said on Friday, but monthly imports rose as buyers stepped up purchases ahead of Indonesia's export tax hike. Traders had expected an 8.0-percent fall in the annual imports of vegetable oils in December, including non-edibles, but had hoped monthly imports to rise 8.3 percent.
Indonesia, the world's top palm oil producer, raised export tax on the crude variety in January to 20 percent from 15 percent. In December, vegetable oil imports by the world's top buyer of cooking oil rose 12.5 percent from the previous month to 752,688 tonnes.
But, in the November-December period, vegetable oil imports fell 6.7 percent from a year earlier to 1.4 million tonnes on better local oilseeds crushing, data from the Solvent Extractors' Association of India (SEAI) showed. "I expect a fall in first-quarter (November-January) imports as the trend is likely to continue," said B.V. Mehta, executive director at the SEAI.
Vegetable oil imports in December was higher than the 724,250-tonne average predicted by traders in a Reuters survey and below 787,423 tonnes imported a year earlier. Palm oil imports, the main variety in the basket, rose an annual 2.2 percent in December, while soyaoil imports were down 51.5 percent. Higher imports by India will push the benchmark Malaysian palm oil futures on Bursa Malaysia Derivatives that edged up 0.2 percent to 3,702 ringgit ($1,212 ) a tonne by midday.
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