India monsoon oilseeds output may decline

India, the world's biggest vegetable oil buyer after China, may produce fewer oilseeds as dry weather in the biggest growing areas reduced monsoon sowing of peanuts, soy and sesame seeds.

Production may be less than the 15.07 million tonnes estimated by the industry's largest trade group for the monsoon crop last year, according to Govindlal G. Patel, director of Dipak Enterprises. Patel, 70, has been trading oilseeds for more than four decades.

India's cooking oil imports may be 8.4 million tonnes in the year starting November, 5 percent up than estimated for this year, Patel said. Higher purchases by the South Asian nation may help arrest a slide in the price of palm oil, which has declined 24 percent since reaching a nine-month high in May. The tropical oil accounts for 90 percent of India's edible oil bought abroad.

Oilseeds were planted on 10.7 million hectares (26.4 million acres) as of July 16, down from 11.03 million hectares at the same time last year, the agriculture ministry said last week. Farmers may reduce area by as much as 800,000 hectares from 18.44 million hectares sown for the monsoon crop last year, because of inadequate rains, Patel said.

Showers have been below average so far in Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu, the nation's biggest growers of peanuts, and in Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra and Rajasthan, India's three biggest growers of soy, according to the India Meteorological Department.

Davish Jain, president of the Central Organization for Oil Industry and Trade, India's biggest group of processors, said "everything depends on rains in August and September".

The monsoon crop, which provides more than 60 percent of the oilseeds, is sown in June and harvested in mid-September.

Soy has been planted to 7.14 million hectares, compared with 7.24 million hectares a year earlier, the ministry said.