KUALA LUMPUR: Pakistan is likely to import more palm oil in 2015 as growing demand from its food industry and lower prices of the edible oil boost overseas purchases, traders and analysts said on Friday.

Robust demand from a key palm oil importer would support benchmark prices that have tumbled 19 per cent this year on rising supply of rival oilseeds, weak uptake in the bio-fuel sector and a rout in crude oil prices.

“The main driving factor for Pakistan to import more palm oil is the food demand,” said Ahsan Mehmood, a senior manager at the commodity trading arm of Engro Corp.

“If ghee producers believe they can make more margins with lower raw material prices, it might prompt them to buy more (palm oil),” Mehmood said. Ghee refers to clarified butter that is made from milk or vegetable oils.

He expects the country’s palm oil imports next year to rise 5pc to 7pc from 2014 levels.

Pakistan shipped in 2.38 million tonnes of edible oils and fats in the first 11 months of 2014, data from the Malaysian Palm Oil Council (MPOC) centre in Lahore showed.

Of the total, 95pc was palm oil — around 70pc of which came from top grower Indonesia and the rest from no. 2 producer Malaysia.

The world’s sixth most populous country uses most of the imported palm in its food sector as cooking oil and to produce ghee, while smaller amounts are absorbed into non-food sectors such as soap manufacturing.

Pakistan’s imports of refined, bleached and deodorised palm oil — which is hydrogenated to make ghee — has jumped 30pc so far in 2014 versus the same period in 2013, the MPOC said.

“We expect an increase (in imports) as domestic vegetable oil demand is rising and the dependence on palm oil in Pakistan is high,” Siegfried Falk, co-editor of Hamburg-based newsletter Oil World said in an email to Reuters.

Published in Dawn, December 6th, 2014