'Oilmeal exports unlikely to escalate in coming months'

Deepak Kumar | The Dollar Business

Even as India’s oilmeal exports recorded a marginal growth of 4% in September, industry experts believe that the shipments are unlikely to witness a significant growth in coming months. “We are not expecting a healthy exports trend in coming months. There are several obstacles ahead including high oil and bean prices, and they are pulling down India’s oilmeal exports. Overall exports are already down by more than 30% in the first six months of the current financial year over the same period in 2014-15. We need some strict measures,” B V Mehta, Executive Director of the Solvent Extractors’ Association (SEA), told The Dollar Business. Oilmeal exports in September registered a growth of 4% and reached 1.14 lakh tonnes as against 1.1 tons shipped during the same month last year. During April-September 2015, oilmeal exports fell by 29% to 7.23 lakh tonnes from 10.24 lakh tonnes during the corresponding period of last year. “The export of soybean meal is at a historical low during current year and reduced month by month and reported 42,743 tonnes compared to 111,027 tonnes during the first six month of the financial year 2015-16. Capacity utilization is at the lowest and many plants are closed down due to disparity in crushing and export,” SEA said in a report. Continuous disparity and high prices affected the availability of oil and meals in the domestic market. It led to a significant decline in the soybean oil exports, the report said. Last month, India exported over 60 thousand tonnes of rapeseed meal, 39 thousand tonnes of castorseed meal, 7.5 thousand tonnes of ricebran extraction, 6.8 thousand tonnes of soyabean meal and 206 tonnes of groundnut meal. So far in this fiscal, soyabean meal exports have declined by over 61% to 42.7 thousand tonnes as against 1.11 lakh tonnes shipped during the same period a year ago. “India’s domestic production has also been affected due to unseasonal rain and its static market. Farmers are not very encouraged. The government will have to come up with some concrete steps to encourage domestic industries in order to boost production,” another industry expert told The Dollar Business.  

October 07, 2015 | 2:37pm IST.