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Pakistan oils imports up
JANUARY 24: Pakistan's vegetable oil imports are likely to rise on the back of rising domestic prices and falling supplies of domestic edible oil, dealers said on Monday.``Local prices are on the rise while world prices are also expected to rise so there is an incentive to import more,'' said a dealer at a major vegoil brokerage house. Many oil mills in Pakistan use cottonseed oil to blend with other oils to make cooking oil.Vegetable oil imports were relatively down in the past few months amid official predictions of a bumper cotton crop of up to 11 million 375-lb bales, from which about 4,00,000 tonnes of cottonseed oil were expected, up from 3,50,000 tonnes last year. Output from last year's crop was 8.7 million bales. The cotton-picking season starts in September and tapers off in February. The broker said palm oil prices were bound to rise as December-February was usually a low production period.``Expectations that palm oil will also be on the rise is likely to prompt importers to book their ordersnow before prices rise too much,'' he said. Copyright © 2000 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.
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