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Soybean oil puts squeeze on wallet

Sohel Parvez
Prices of soybean have peaked as winter limits traders' scope to sell the edible oil by mixing it with relatively low-priced palm oil, insiders said yesterday.
Also, rising prices of soybean oil on the global market due to strong demand from the top buyer China are to blame for the price spike on the local market.
The first signs of the price hike appeared one week before the Eid-ulAzha.
The overall prices of loose soybean oil rose toTk 80-84 per litre last week from Tk 75-78 in the same period a month ago.
Palm oil prices also increased in the same period, according to retail price data by state-owned Trading (Corporation of Bangladesh.
Loose soybean oil traded high
despite year-end sales pressure from wholesalers in Moulavibazar, one of the hubs in Dhaka, to cash in the product.
Consumers are spending more on packed soybean as well. Now a five-litre bottle trades between Tk 460-11 440, dependingon the brands, up from Tk395-405aboutamonth earlier.
Now a consumer will have to spend an additional Tk 45 to buy a five-litre bottle of Teer brand soybean oil. Its price was about Tk 405 before Eid, said a retailer.
“The customers' burden would have been reduced much, if processors had distributed oil directly to us instead of depending on middlemen such as dealers,” said Abu Taher, who runs a grocery, Mukta Enterprise, at New Market in Dhaka.
Taller, who sells packed soybean oil, said prices started rising at the
end of November.
Prices of soybean, which meets about 35 percent of annual requirement of edible oil, usually shoot up in winter as mixing of palm oil with other oils is all but impossible in the colder part of the year, some traders say. Palm oil freez.es in winter.
The size of the edible oil market is about 14 lakh tonnes a year.
Crude degummed soybean oil is usually imported from countries such as Argentina and Brazil where prices are on the rise.
"We imported crude soybean at $820-840 a tonne just after Eid. On December 13, we had to count $891.20 (C&F) for each tonne of imported crude soybean oil,” said Biswajit Saha, general manager of City Group of Industries, which marketsTeer brand soybean oil.
"What we are selling now was
imported in the second week of December."
In its December issue of Commodity Markets Review, the World Bank showed that prices of soybean oil rose since September.
According to the WB report, the average prices of soybean oil rose to $939 a tonne in November from $846 in September.
Citing costs of duty, refining, bank interests, packaging and distribution, Biswajit claims that the price now charged by the company at factory level stands below its overall production cost.
Md Abul Hasem, general secretary of loose edible oil wholesaler body, Bangladesh Paikary Vojjo Tel Baboshayee Samity, said the wholesale prices of loose soybean oil declined this week from a week ago.
sohel@thedailystar.net