India has imported 516,223 tonnes of masur (lentil), tur (pigeon pea) and urad (black gram) so far this current calendar year, marking a nearly 29% decrease from a year earlier, a top government official said.
In January-March of 2023, India had imported 724,883 tonnes of these pulses.
The fall in imports of these three pulses is attributed to a tight supply globally amid likely hoarding on expectations of India’s increasing import demand.
“In case of tur, production worldwide is lower than the previous year,” said consumer affairs secretary Rohit Kumar Singh. “Sometimes, they hoard the crop on expectations of further price rise, but thankfully, we have been able to put a lid on rising prices, though prices are quite high now.”
“They cannot hold the crop for long as storage cost is involved. Pulses is a basket and behave independently, but if you look at the mathematical model, it interplays in pulses. We controlled chana prices by launching Bharat Dal and opening imports of yellow peas. This is why tur price is in control now. People who are sensitive to price, they shifted to chana or diversified their pulses consumption.”
Tur imports fell to 122,817 tonnes since January this year against 252,004 tonnes during the corresponding period last year.
This comes at a time India’s tur production is estimated to fall to 3.3 million tonnes (mt) compared to 4.5 mt consumption.
“For pigeon peas (tur), India faces a significant shortfall…To meet this need, India looks to countries like Myanmar, Tanzania, Mozambique, and others in Africa for imports. As India does not have public or private carry-in stocks, higher prices are expected,” Deepak Pareek , agriculture economist, said.
Similarly, urad and masur saw a decline in imports during the same period. While urad imports to date since January this year fell to 128,120 tonnes from last year’s 139,382 tonnes, imports of masur were 265,285 tonnes, down from 333,446 tonnes last year.
Pareek is optimistic lentils prices will remain subdued on the back of robust output. “India’s production is strong at 1.6 mt, and major suppliers like Canada and Australia also report good harvests. As we have good carry-in both with public and private players, the prices of lentils will remain subdued.”
Production of kharif pulses, especially tur and urad, has been low in the past two consecutive crop years (2022-23 and 2023-24), hurt by unseasonal rainfall in October 2022 and deficit rainfall in major growing states during the southwest monsoon of 2023. This kept prices of tur and urad elevated throughout 2023, leading to higher imports.
India imported 2.98 million tonnes (mt) pulses in January-December 2023, against 2 mt a year earlier. A total of 2.2 mt of these three pulses were imported in FY23, compared to 2.1 mt in the previous fiscal year, according to the data from the ministry of commerce and industry.
India, which relies on imports to meet its domestic demand of about 28 mt, primarily purchases these three pulses from Australia, Canada, Russia, Myanmar, Mozambique, Tanzania, Sudan and Malawi. Despite some improvement since 2011, the gap between demand and supply of pulses is widening and has necessitated annual import of 2.5-3 mt of pulses in the past few years.
In October, the agriculture ministry lowered its final estimates for pulses production to 26 mt for the 2022-23 crop year (July-June) from its May estimates of 27.5 mt due to a drop in production of major pulses such as tur and chana (gram). In the 2021-22 crop year, the country is projected to have produced 27 mt pulses.
In the 2023-24 crop year, the country is expected to produce 3.3 mt of tur compared to October’s forecast of 3.42 mt, and 1.5 mt of urad in Kharif alone against 1.8 mt in the previous season. India produced 2.6 mt of urad in the entire 2022-23 crop year. Production of gram, or chana, crop is estimated at 12.1 mt, which is marginally lower from previous year’s output but higher than the average production over 2018-19 to 2022-23. Production of lentil, or masur, is estimated at 1.63 mt, higher than the previous year’s production of 1.55 mt.
