Ukraine's major sunflower oil market means to impose import duty

India, the main buyer of Ukrainian sunflower oil, plans to introduce an import duty on unrefined sunflower oil like it has been recently introduced for refined palm oil, Grain Trade writes.

"This will further reduce the demand, especially as the supply of cheap palm and soybean oil increases," analysts say.

As reported, the demand for Ukrainian sunflower oil remains low, but due to limited supply, prices are kept at high levels of 700-710 USD/t FOB for June-July supplies and 670-685 USD/t FOB for new harvest products.

The recent 10% increase in oil prices, in turn, did not support vegetable oil markets which suffer from lack of demand, while even a small purchase of soybean oil by China from the US raised its prices by 1%.

In September-April 2019/20, Ukrainian sunflower oil exports reached a record level of 4.5 mln t, 9% higher YoY.