India could face shortage of sunflower oil due to Ukraine crisis

The Russian Invasion of Ukraine could lead to a shortage of sunflower oil for consumers in India because of its dependence on Ukraine, and Russia. Government sources say that India imports about 1.6-1.8 lakh metric tonnes of sunflower oil per month and the shortage could be evident because of rising demand, and low supply."

Sudhakar Desai, president of the Indian Vegetable Oil Producers' Association said, "India's dependency on sunflower oil from Ukraine is about 80 per cent while the rest 20 per cent is from Russia. Currently, India has stock that could last until end of march. An alternative solution is to divert supply from Argentina or other places to meet demand. We could also look at replacing sunflower oil, with palm, mustard, soya oil etc."

The Ukraine crisis could further increase the prices of sunflower oil due to the shortage. The price of refined sunflower oil in the retail market has shot up to Rs 161.94/litre as compared to Rs 145.03/litre, according to the Price Monitoring Cell of the Union Ministry of Consumer Affairs. For the oil supply year 2020-2021, India had imported a total of 19 lakh tonnes of crude sunflower oil out of which, imports from Ukraine were around 14 lakh tonnes.