UPDATE 1-India's palm oil imports drop 41% m/m to 9-month low

(Rewrites paragraph 1 with context, adds details and trader's comments from paragraph 2) By Rajendra Jadhav and Ashitha Shivaprasad Jan 14 (Reuters) - India's palm oil imports in December plunged 41% from a month earlier to a nine-month low, as a rally in prices to a 2-1/2-year high prompted refiners to increase purchases of rival soyoil available at a discount, a leading trade body said. Lower palm oil imports by India, the world's biggest buyer of vegetable oils, could weigh on benchmark Malaysian palm oil prices FCPOc3 , but support U.S. soyoil futures Boc2 . Palm oil imports in December fell to 500,175 metric tons, the lowest since March 2024, the Solvent Extractors' Association of India (SEA) said in a statement on Tuesday. Imports of soyoil increased 3.2% to 420,651 tons, the highest in four months, and sunflower oil imports fell 22.3% to 264,836 tons, the trade body said. Lower imports of palm oil and sunflower oil brought down the country's total vegetable oil imports in December by 24.3% to 1.23 million tons, the lowest in three months, the SEA said. Palm oil is losing market share in India to cheaper soyoil as declining Malaysian palm oil exports due to tightening supplies are driving consumers towards South American soyoil, the SEA said. Palm oil usually trades at a discount to soyoil and sunflower oil, but falling stocks have lifted its prices above rival oils, whose supplies are abundant, traders said. Palm oil's premium over rival oils has come down in the last few weeks, but the vegetable oil still holds a premium of more than $40 per ton over soyoil, which will encourage Indian buyers to reduce imports even in January, said a Mumbai-based dealer with a global trade house. India buys palm oil mainly from Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand, while it imports soyoil and sunflower oil from Argentina, Brazil, Russia and Ukraine. (Reporting by Rajendra Jadhav in Mumbai, Ashitha Shivaprasad and Anushree Mukherjee in Bengaluru; Editing by Jacqueline Wong and Subhranshu Sahu) (([email protected];))