New Delhi: In a situation where the price of imported cooking oil has risen due to global inflation and the depreciation of the rupee, India’s overall vegetable oil imports fell by 4.71 percent to 16.09 lakh tonnes in August, as palm oil imports declined, the Solvent Extractors’ Association of India said. In the same month last year, the import volume was 16.94 lakh tonnes.
During the November-August period of 2025-26, total vegetable oil imports increased by 4 percent. This rose from 133.37 lakh tonnes last year to 138.8 lakh tonnes, the Solvent Extractors' Association of India said.
India, the world's largest importer of vegetable oil, imported 15.72 lakh tonnes of edible oil and 37,150 tonnes of non-edible oil in August. Notably, in the same month last year, these figures were 16.88 lakh tonnes and 55,821 tonnes, respectively.
Imports of refined cooking oil rose to 1.01 lakh tonnes in August from 64,403 tonnes in the same month last year. At the same time, imports of crude oil fell from 16.24 lakh tonnes to 14.70 lakh tonnes.
As for crude oil, palm oil imports declined from 9.79 lakh tonnes to 7.60 lakh tonnes, and sunflower oil imports fell from 2.57 lakh tonnes to 1.55 lakh tonnes. Meanwhile, soybean oil imports increased from 3.87 lakh tonnes to 5.54 lakh tonnes.
Imports from Nepal
Imports of refined oils from Nepal were significant. Between November 2025 and August 2026, Nepal exported a total of 5.96 lakh tonnes of refined oils to India. This included 5.31 lakh tonnes of refined soybean oil, 33,881 tonnes of refined sunflower oil, 28,728 tonnes of RBD palmolein, and 4,428 tonnes of rapeseed oil.
Under the South Asian Free Trade Area agreement, Nepal is mainly importing crude soybean oil using the duty-free concession and re-exporting it to India as refined soybean oil, the Solvent Extractors' Association of India noted.
Stock details
As of September 1, the total stock of edible oil stood at 20.43 lakh tonnes. This was 31,000 tonnes higher than the 20.12 lakh tonnes in stock in the previous month.
