MUMBAI, Sept 25: Pakistan hopes to more than double its imports of crude palm oil to 800,000 tonnes by the end of calendar year 2006 with the setting up of new refineries to process crude, a top industry official said on Sunday. “The volume of edible oil imports next year will be the same 1.5 million tonnes as in the current year but there will be a shift in the commodity,” Rasheed Janmohammed, director of the country’s leading edible oil importers Westbury Group, told Reuters in an interview.

He said Pakistan imports about 1.3 million tonnes of palm products and 200,000 tonnes of soft oils. Out of the total palm products imports, RBD palm olein constitutes one million and the remaining is crude palm oil.

Nearly 60 per cent of Pakistan’s crude palm oil is sourced from Malaysia while the rest comes from Indonesia.

The country annually consumes 2.5 million tonnes of edible oils. It produces about 600,000 tonnes of cottonseed oil and imports 0.5 million tonnes of rapeseed from Canada, Australia and Europe for processing.

He said if everything went according to schedule, Pakistan will have fresh capacity to process 300,000 tonnes of crude in the first quarter of next year and more would come up later.

“With the setting up of more refineries, we will be going for value addition through refining and by 2007, I foresee Pakistan importing one million tonnes of crude palm oil,” Janmohammed said.

He said there was a difference of $35 per tonne between the price of crude palm oil and palm olein and the country could save up to $35 million annually if it switched over to CPO imports.

He said Pakistan was also putting up a refinery at a port near Karachi to process CPO and other facilities were also coming up.

He said the country was keen to expand its oilseed production but there were constraints on land.

“Pakistan’s climate is suitable for sunflower seed cultivation but the priority is production of grain and sugar and as such not much spare land is available for oilseeds cultivation,” he said.

He said Pakistan hoped to buy more soymeal this year from India but did not give any figures. —Reuters