What is disappointing is the fact that against the commerce ministry's target of earning $900 million from exports during 1997-98, the industry could manage to export only $762 million worth of oilseed meals, down 15.33 per cent, or $138 million.

Included in the list of lower-than-targeted oilseeds extraction exports are: soyameal (down 10.43 per cent); groundnut meal (19.17 per cent); rice bran meal (16 per cent); sunflowerseed meal (25 per cent) and castorseed meal (17 per cent). Further, during the last quarter, there were large scale rejections of Indian soyameal and groundnut meal. Surprisingly, there were simply no exports of soyameal in March 1998; this compareswith the December 1997 figure of 645,445 tonnes, the highest during the whole of 1997-98.

Three reasons for this situation: One, an estimated 19,000-20,000 tonnes of Indian soyameal was rejected in January this year by a group of South Korean buyers, allegedly because of quality problems. Two, in late February, the Philippine government said it was investigating the quality of Indian soyabean crop and soyameal.

Three, last week, the South Korea's Korean Feed Association (KFA) announced to its members that it had banned German trader Toepfer (of the US-based ADR group, the multimillion dollar commodity banker) from participating in import tenders for two years for the supply of poor quality Indian soyameal contracted in October 1997.

South Korea's soyameal imports from India totalled 214,379 tonnes in all of 1997, down almost 35 per cent from 329,758 tonnes in 1996, according to data from the Korean International Trade Association. South Korea's total soyameal imports stood at 731,126 tonnes in 1997against 1,124,275 tonnes in 1996.

Oilseed extraction exports had been rising till December 1997, mainly to the south-east Asian countries. From a low of around 282,222 tonnes in April 1997 (almost half of the 466,652 recorded in April 1996), oilseed extraction exports peaked at 813,622 lakh tonnes in December 1997 (6,19,580 tonnes in December 1996).

However, since then, the overall extraction export figures have declined sharply to 718,337 tonnes in January (5,38,633 tonnes) and 479,705 tonnes in February 1998 (332,419 tonnes) and 428,902 tonnes in March 1998.

Unseasonable rains during November and December 1997 severely affected the soyabean crop leading to high moisture and low protein content in soyameal. This is what led to a drastic fall in their exports. From a high of 645,445 tonnes in December 1997 (517,792 tonnes), soyameal exports declined in January 1998 to 550,949 tonnes (444,302 tonnes) and further down in February 1998 to 385,945 tonnes (228,945 tonnes). In March 1998, there were noexports of soyameal.