To control rising edible oil prices during the festival season, the base custom duties on palm, soyabean and sunflower oils have been reduced further, bearing a revenue loss of Rs 1,100 crore, the government said on Saturday. The move, the industry said, could bring down retail prices by Rs 4-5 per litre.

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The custom duties have been reduced on both crude and refined variants of the three cooking oils, according to the Ministry of Consumer Affairs, Food & Public Distribution. However, the agri-cess on crude palm oil has been increased from 17.5 percent to 20 percent, it said in a statement. The Finance Ministry has notified the cut in customs duties of these oils effective from September 11 till further orders, it added.

According to the Finance Ministry notification, the base import tax on crude palm oil has been reduced to 2.5 percent from 10 percent, while the tax on crude soyabean oil and crude sunflower oil has been reduced to 2.5 percent from 7.5 percent. With this reduction, the effective duty on crude palm oil, crude soyabean oil and crude sunflower oil will come down to 24.75 percent, whereas effective duty on refined palm oil, soyoil and sunflower oil will be 35.75 percent.

Also Read: India cuts import taxes on vegetable oils to calm prices

In an interview with Manisha Gupta, Atul Chaturvedi of Adani Wilmar said, a duty cut was expected but he was surprised to see that there is no reduction of duties for rapeseed oil.

"This news was expected but what surprised me in this notification is that they have not reduced the duties for rapeseed oil which continues to be at 38.5 percent. I don't understand why the rapeseed oil has been ceded out even when mustard is actually spearheading the bull-run as far as domestic edible oils are concerned."

He said in terms of prices, the worst for the consumer is over.

Also Read: Pros and cons of government's push for palm oil

"Whatever duties we reduce in India, the impact on the domestic values is only about 50-60 percent and the balance is negated by price increase in the exporting countries. So Indian consumers will be benefitted but this time around world values are also softening a bit. So I think the worst for the consumer is over."

With text inputs from PTI.

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(Edited by : Kanishka Sarkar)