One ship carries over 22.5m litres of soybean oil

A ship carrying oil arrived at Chittagong port amid the crisis of soybean oil in the country’s market ahead of Eid-ul-Fitr. After the ship with 22.9 million litres of oil reached the port Thursday, the unloading is in full swing.

According to port sources, Bashundhara Group, City Group, Bangladesh Edible Oil Limited and Sena Kalyan Edible Oil Limited imported the soybean oil in the MV Orient Challenge ship.

Asked Chittagong Port Secretary, Omar Farooq told Prothom Alo that the unloading of the imported soybean oil was almost finished. It is scheduled to leave the port on Monday.

After importing the oil, it is first placed at the Customs Bonded Tank Terminal in Patenga area. After paying the duty, the companies unload the tank from the terminal and take it to the factory for refining.

Due to high demand in the market, the factories are now regularly unloading the tank from the terminal and taking it to the factory for refining.

Biswajit Saha, director of City Group, a soybean oil importer on the ship, told Prothom Alo that it was being refined and marketed quickly after the oil was imported. City Group oil is being supplied to the market every day.

The country imports soybean oil in unrefined form. Soybean oil is also obtained by threshing imported seeds. As in the last financial year, the average monthly import in unrefined form is 65,000 tonnes.

As such, it is possible to meet the demand of at least 10 days with 22.9 million tonnes of soybean oil.

Soybean prices in the world market began to fluctuate after the Russia-Ukraine war.

Following the announcement of restrictions on exports by Argentina and the suspension of Indonesian palm oil exports, there was a new record of rising prices.

The traders also reduced the import for not incurring desired profit. At the same time, the stockists started hoarding as they sensed the price might go up after Eid creating an artificial crisis of soybean oil in the country.