Palm Oil Sector Suggests Strategy To Check Inflation

Tag : RBD Palm Oil

The vegetable oil sector has suggested three-pronged strategy tocheck the inflationary trend.
The annual rate of inflation in wholesale prices of commoditiesstood at 8.17% in the week ended August 21. Edible oils registeredan inflation of 0.6%. The vegetable oil industry has suggested thegovernment to revise tariff values on imported palm oil products,aligning it with the current downward trend in global prices.
It has also demanded revision of the revenue departmentsnotification relating to carotenoid content in imported crude palmoil (CPO) and clarity in the DEPB scheme relating to duty drawbackson exports of oilmeals against imports of edible oils.
Central Organisation for Oil Industry and Trade executive directorKLM Chhabbra said, Government periodically fixes tariff values ofpalm oil products and crude soybean oil. Tariff values for palm oilproducts were last revised on November 14, 2003 and that of crudesoybean oil on May 31, 2004. Now global prices of edible oils haveshown a downward trend in the past several months. There is a widedivergence in global prices and tariff values.
The benefit of fall in prices has not been passed on to theconsumers in domestic market. Therefore, there is a need to revisetariff values to align it with global prices to the extent feasibleas this would have a sobering effect on domestic market prices.
Vegetable oils are in the list of those sensitive commodities onwhich tariff values on imports are fixed periodically apart fromthe basic customs duty. The tariff values are fixed in relation tothe trend in global prices.