External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar has said the Russia-Ukraine war has prompted India, the world's biggest importer of edible oil, to look for alternative sources of sunflower oil in Latin American countries. Addressing a business event here in the Ugandan capital on Tuesday, Jaishankar said India was a big importer of sunflower oil from Ukraine and the outbreak of the war disrupted the supplies.
India imports 25 lakh tonnes of sunflower oil annually, of which 70 per cent comes from Ukraine, 20 per cent from Russia and 10 per cent from Argentina. "A year ago, when the Ukraine conflict started, obviously the first hit which the world economy took was in the price of oil...What was a less noticed story was actually the problems which a country like India faced in terms of edible oil because we were big importers of sunflower oil from Ukraine," Jaishankar said.
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The pressure on India to find compensatory resources actually took Indian importers well beyond their traditional sources in the ASEAN countries. "It actually took them to Latin America," he said. There was a big spike in India's trade with Latin America and interestingly a large part is accounted for by edible oil, Jaishankar added. India's imports of edible oils increased to 140.3 lakh tonnes in the 2021-22 marketing year ended October from 131.3 lakh tonnes in the previous year, according to the industry body Solvent Extractors' Association.
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