Edible oil body SEA meets Indonesian trade minister, seeks stable export policies for palm oil

New Delhi [India], August 29 : Edible oil industry body The Solvent Extractors' Association of India (SEA) has requested Indonesia to maintain stable export duties and levies besides trade policies related to palm oil to ensure less speculation on what stance the government might take.
Earlier this month, Indonesian Embassy in New Delhi organized an Indonesia-India Roundtable Business Engagement where the Indonesian side was headed by trade minister Zulkifli Hasan. The roundtable was followed by a special meeting with a delegation of the edible oil industry body SEA to discuss various matters pertaining to, how to step up export of crude palm oil from Indonesia to India.
India is a large importer of edible oils, and a sizable part of it comes from Indonesia.
"We advised trade minister that with prices coming down and better supply from Indonesia, import of palm oil should increase in coming days and Indonesia should ensure a stable policy for exports," SEA said in a statement.
SEA President Atul Chaturvedi-led delegation discussed extensively on how a ban on palm oil exports has caused supply chain issues in India and also "put a dent" on the Indonesian policy decision making by which they have apparently lost their market share to other palm oil producing nation and how the commodity lost the market share to soft oils.
"Indonesian Trade minister took the feedback positively and ensured that there won't be any such supply crunch from Indonesia," the statement said.
They also touched upon the topic on how a difference in export tax and levy on refined products against crude variants may give an advantage to refined products as India is one of the largest consumers and has a lot of refining capacity and any advantage given to refined products at origins makes refining unviable in India which the industry body is not sustainable on longer-term as this might give advantage to soft oils where refining capacity can be utilized and refiners can make some margins.
Further, the delegation delved upon Indonesia's biofuel mandate and suggested it was "not good to burn the edible oil when there are still some developing and underdeveloped countries fighting with hunger and poverty," the statement added.
To this observation, Indonesia said it understands the situation but they need to counter the imports of biofuels in the country and ensure that their farmers get better realization and hence they have started the trials.
"However he has not given any clear picture whether they'll surely go for B-40," the statement added. B-40 means the mixing of as much as 40 per cent biofuel in the transport fuels.
Lastly, the SEA delegated requested the Indonesian trade minister to form a Palm Promotion Council jointly with SEA so that they together can try to change the negative image of palm oil and further suggested earmarking some fund for the promotion, to which the statement said the minister "positively responded and agreed to look into this suggestion."
Palm oil is still viewed as "poor man's oil" in India and perceived as unhealthy oil and that's the sole reason that palm oil is not consumed widely in households and primarily used for out of home consumption, the edible oil body explained their rationale behind the proposal to from a promotion council.