He was delivering the keynote address at the annual general body meeting of All India Cottonseed Crushers' Association (Aicosca) held here on Thursday. He assured that the government may consider implementing a couple of recommendations suggested to the Technology Mission on oilseeds and pulses under the eight point action plan for revival of scientific cottonseed processing.

Explaining that the government had to increase the MSP for soyabean as well as sunflower during the year in the interest of farmers', he added that it would not be possible for the centre to do this very often. He cited the lack of surplus amount of funds as the reasons for the same.

Expressing concern over high levels of edible oil import to the tune of 35-37 lakhtonnes, he said that the country had faced a shortage of 15 lakh tonne only.

Against this backdrop, due to excessive imports prices of edible oils have crashed. As a result, the demand from oilseed crushing sector has also declined leaving the farmers with no incentive to increase oilseed production because they apprehend lower remuneration for this commodity. He also strongly advocated the need to exercise constraint by traders while booking import orders for edible oils so as the prevalent situation may not repeat.

While defending the reduction of edible oil import duty to 10 per cent, he said that the government was more or less forced to do so as the domestic prices last year had shot up to historically high levels.

On the issue of allowing imports, he cautioned the industry that while lifting of oilseeds by the crushing sector has gone down, there exist no rationale in opening up gates for imports.

The chairman of Aicosca, G Sivaram Prasad, called upon the government to treat cottonseedprocessing industry on par with the textile industry. Although cottonseed formed two-third of seed cotton, most of the research work and investment were concentrated on use of lint in the textile industry. The seed processors are not in a position to get quality cottonseed in requisite quantity to run their processing plants efficiently, he said.

The cottonseed processing industry should be permitted to import quality cottonseed duty free as and when indigenous supply is not available so as to maintain continuity in production and achieve sustainable growth in export of cottonseed extraction linters and others, he said.