New Delhi, June 30 - The revival of India's vital monsoon rains has improved prospects of oilseed crops and encouraged the government to abandon a proposal to step up edible oil imports for public distribution, government officials said.
Top officials said on Tuesday that in recent weeks when monsoon rains were erratic, the government had asked state-run trading firms to be ready to import edible oils, as they did last year, for supply to the poor.
Last week, the weather office said total rainfall from the crucial June-September monsoon would be only 93 percent of the long-term average, coming in below normal for the first time in four years.
Policy makers and farmers were worried as the rainfall between June 1, the start of the monsoon season, and June 24 was less than half of normal.
But the annual rain cycle has revived in recent days.
"We are hopeful that oilseed growing areas of central and western India would get adequate rains by the middle of July," said a senior government official.
"The proposal for imports was not finally considered," a senior food ministry official who did not wish to named told Reuters.
The contingency plan was similar to the federal government's cooking oil import programme of last year, meant for distribution among the poor at subsidised rates.
Four state-run firms were involved in the import scheme that began in April, 2008. "The scheme helped us to keep prices in check early this year...," said another official.
Out of the targeted one million tonnes of imports, the firms imported about 360,000 tonnes of the cooking oils until the government stopped imports in December.
India, a net edible oil importer, mainly buys palm oil from Indonesia, Malaysia and a small quantity of soyoil from Brazil and Argentina.