The Indian government has exempted rice bran from import duty, which was earlier 15%, in the recently announced Union Budget for 2014-15 to help domestic edible oil processing sector, which has a capacity of producing around 1.4 million tons of rice bran oil annually. India is the world's largest producer of rice bran oil currently producing about 900,000 tons of rice bran oil annually, accounting for about 75% of total global production of about 1.2 million tons
India, world's second largest producer of rice, produces around 9 million tons of rice bran every year, but only 5 million tons of it is used to extract edible oil and the remaining is used by the vanaspati segment or as cattle feed. The edible oil sector usually imports rice bran from neighboring Bangladesh, Myanmar and Sri Lanka and the import duty of 15% discouraged from importing huge quantities of rice bran, says the Executive Director (ED) of the Solvent Extractors’ Association (SEA) in India.
Rice bran oil, which is rich in mono-unsaturated fatty acids and has a higher cholesterol reducing power, is gaining significance in India recently. It is said to be better than other poly-unsaturated fatty acid PUFA) rich oils.
Earlier, the SEA ED had noted that if the production of rice bran is increased to its capacity level, India could reduce its import bill of around Rs.600 billion (around $9.6 billion) on importing edible oils such as palm oil, soybean oil an sunflower oil.
Yesterday, there were reports that Bangladesh is planning to ban rice bran exports temporarily to support local edible oil industry.
Source:- oryza.com