India on Thursday clarified that duty-free imports of soyoil and sunflower oil shipped before March 31 would be allowed until the end of June, after hundreds of thousands of cargoes were stuck at ports over confusion over import rules. Earlier this year, the world's biggest importer of vegetable oils scrapped a duty-free imports quota of 2 million tonnes of crude sunflower oil
India imports 25 lakh tonnes of sunflower oil annually, of which 70 per cent comes from Ukraine, 20 per cent from Russia and 10 per cent from Argentina.
The cultivation of sunflower crop, one of the most important sources of vegetable oil, has picked up pace in the sunflower growing regions of the country such as West Bengal.