June 4, 2025
Late on Friday night, India time, May 30th, 2025, the Government of India dropped a notification that’s making ripples across global agri-markets. The free import policy for yellow peas has been extended to March 31st, 2026. Now, on paper, it may seem like a routine extension. But if you look closely, this move might be more strategic than it appears.
At the heart of India’s latest import policy extension. With duty-free access until March 2026, yellow peas are playing a strategic role in food inflation control, trade stability — and shifting global demand.
To put it simply, "free import" means zero import duties. It’s like opening the floodgates – and that’s pretty much what happened in 2024. India brought in close to 3 million tons of yellow peas that year alone. To give you a sense of scale, that’s 3.3 times the average annual consumption between 2021 and 2023.
This kind of volume didn’t just happen by accident. It suggests there was some substitution going on – other pulses likely got swapped out in favor of yellow peas. Of those 3 million tons, around 50% came from Canada, 30% from Russia, and the rest trickled in from places like Ukraine, Latvia, Turkey, and Lithuania.
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