

After the government's move to slash the standard rate of duty on edible oils a week ago, a massive difference in daily wholesale prices has been witnessed, the Consumer Affairs Ministry said on Friday.
The daily wholesale prices of packed palm oil dropped by 2.50%, followed by sesame oil by 2.08%, coconut oil by 1.72%, packed groundnut oil by 1.38%, packed sunflower oil by 1.30%, packed mustard oil by 0.97%, packed vanaspati by 0.71% and packed soya oil by 0.68%.
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"Based on the interaction with all the states and edible oil industry associations, need for greater transparency was felt. As a follow-up action, the Department of Food and Public Distribution is in the process of creating a web portal for monitoring the stocks of edible oils/oilseeds on a weekly basis in the country," the ministry statement said.
From the table below, it is clear that the wholesale price of edible oils has been showing a decreasing trend over the last week.
To control rising edible oil prices during the festival season, the government further slashed base custom duties on palm, soybean and sunflower oils, bearing a revenue loss of Rs 1,100 crore, it said on September 11.
The move, the industry said, could bring down retail prices by Rs 4-5 per litre. The customs duties were reduced on both crude and refined variants of these three cooking oils.
But the agri-cess on crude palm oil was increased from 17.5 per cent to 20 per cent. The Finance Ministry had notified the cut in customs duties of these oils effective from September 11 till further orders.
As per the Finance Ministry notification, the base import tax on crude palm oil has been reduced to 2.5 per cent from 10 per cent, while the tax on crude soyabean oil and crude sunflower oil has been reduced to 2.5 per cent from 7.5 per cent.
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With this reduction, the effective duty on crude palm oil, crude soyabean oil and crude sunflower oil will come down to 24.75 per cent, whereas effective duty on refined palm oil, soy oil and sunflower oil will be 35.75 per cent.
The move came amid an unabated rise in edible oil prices in India -- which imports 60 per cent of its demand -- despite several recent government measures.
Import duty on edible oils is one of the important factors that impacted landed cost of edible oils and thereby domestic prices.
It was reduced a few months back and has further been slashed now to boost domestic supply and check price rise.
According to the consumer affairs ministry, the current cut in customs duty on these cooking oils will result in an estimated revenue loss of Rs 1,100 crore.
And with an additional estimated Rs 3,500 crore revenue loss from earlier reduction of customs duties on these oils, the government will bear a total loss of Rs 4,600 crore which is expected to be passed on to the consumers, the ministry said.