"This will have serious impact on domestic palm oil refining industry and oil seeds farmers. "Lower import duty would make it difficult to defend MSP and the new found enthusiasm of the oil seed farmers would be dampened," he said. The duty cut would be counterproductive and contrary to the government's stated objective of increasing domestic oil seed production, he added. Similarly, Malaysia has imposed export duty of $31% on CPO and zero duty on refined palmolein which work out to be nearly 5% on CPO value, thus effective duty difference is hardly 2.5% only. "We strongly appeal to the government to increase the duty differential between CPO and refined palm oil to 15%, by taking appropriate measures," the industry body added.

Source: Mint January 01, 2020 13:07 UTC