
India's edible oil imports rose to 166.51 lakh tonnes in FY26. Nepal's duty-free shipments more than doubled, substituting for other origins and squeezing domestic refiners.
India's edible oil imports rose 3% to 166.51 lakh tonnes in the 2025–26 fiscal year, the Solvent Extractors' Association of India (SEA) reported on Tuesday. The headline gain of 4.69 lakh tonnes over the prior year's 161.82 lakh tonnes came entirely from one origin. Nepal, under the zero-duty access of the South Asian Free Trade Area (SAFTA), shipped 7.36 lakh tonnes of edible oils to India in calendar 2026 – more than double the 3.45 lakh tonnes a year earlier. SEA said that without the SAFTA arrangement, total imports would have fallen short of the previous year's level despite rising domestic demand. The mechanism behind the shift carries direct implications for domestic refiners, competing origins, and policy risk.
Nepal's refined soybean oil made up the bulk of the duty-free shipments. Smaller volumes of sunflower oil, RBD Palmolein, and rapeseed oil also moved through the corridor. The jump from 3.45 lakh tonnes to 7.36 lakh tonnes in one calendar year is not a statistical blip. It represents an incremental 3.91 lakh tonnes that displaced imports from other sources. SEA directly linked the trend to SAFTA preference:
Prepared with AlphaScala research tooling and grounded in primary market data: live prices, fundamentals, SEC filings, hedge-fund holdings, and insider activity. Each story is checked against AlphaScala publishing rules before release. Educational coverage, not personalized advice.