MUMBAI: India’s palm oil imports jumped 31% in January from a year earlier as lower import taxes prompted refiners to increase purchases of the tropical oil, while soyaoil and sunflower oil imports fell, a trade body said on Thursday.

The country imported 780,741 tonnes of palm oil last month, while soyaoil imports plunged 66% to 88,667 tonnes “as truckers strikes in Argentina seriously affected loading during November,” the Solvent Extractors’ Association of India (SEA) said in a statement.

India in late November slashed the import tax on crude palm oil (CPO) to 27.5% from 37.5%, as New Delhi tried to bring down rising food prices.

The CPO imports jumped 24% to 2.17 million tonnes in the first quarter of the 2020/21 marketing year started on Nov. 1 due to the duty reduction, the SEA said.

The country’s sunflower oil imports fell 32% to 205,227 tonnes in January, it added.

India buys palm oil from Indonesia and Malaysia, while other oils including soyaoil and sunflower oil are sourced from Argentina, Brazil, Ukraine and Russia.

India’s palm oil imports could fall in February as the government has changed the duty structure in its annual budget presented on Feb. 1, a Mumbai-based dealer with a global trading firm said.