“Indian households are price conscious and flexible in switching to cheaper vegetable oils,” Aashish Acharya, a vice president at Patanjali Foods Ltd, said in an interview on the sidelines of Globoil, a vegetable oil conference.

Inbound shipments will rise by about 9% next year starting in November from an estimated 5.5 million tonnes in 2024-25, he said in Mumbai on Thursday.

The shift in buying pattern could reshape India’s edible oil mix and add pressure on top palm oil exporters – Indonesia and Malaysia, which are already grappling with weaker demand. Benchmark palm oil prices have fallen by 4.5% in Kuala Lumpur from a five-month high in August.

Local buyers ramped up soybean oil imports from Argentina earlier this week, seizing on a temporary suspension of export levies by the South American nation that made the commodity more competitive, Acharya said.

Indian traders and processors snapped up 300,000 to 350,000 tonnes of soybean oil in three days this week from Argentina and China for shipments between October and February, he said.

Landed cost of palm oil in India is currently as much as US$40 a tonne more than soybean oil, he said. Soy oil normally commands a premium over palm, but a higher supply outlook and US President Donald Trump’s trade policies have dampened its prices.

Palm oil imports by India may fall to about 7.5 million tonnes in 2025-26, from an estimated 7.9 million tonnes a year earlier, Acharya said. The country bought about 9 million tonnes of the tropical commodity in 2023-24, according to the Solvent Extractors’ Association of India.