Reading Pulses Through the Import Ledger: A PULSES Briefing on Firm Retail Prices and a Duty Line That Is Not Moving
This briefing reads the pulses market through its import ledger, in six parts that spell the complex: P, U, L, S, E, S. Imports are up two-thirds in five months, retail prices are up by as much as 15 per cent, and the government has said plainly that import duties will not be cut to fix either number. For processors, traders and the lenders behind them, the policy line is now as important as the crop line.
P — Prices at the retail counter are still climbing
Government price data put tur dal at ₹129.96 per kg on 14 October, up 12.7 per cent from ₹115.31 a year earlier. Urad dal rose 9.3 per cent to ₹124.54, chana dal 5 per cent to ₹91.64, moong dal 2.8 per cent to ₹113.66 and masur dal 1.6 per cent to ₹90.93. A later reading from the Department of Consumer Affairs' price monitoring cell, reported on 26 October, showed whole tur at ₹132.75 per kg, up 15 per cent, chana at ₹93.48, up 7.5 per cent, and urad at ₹125.46, up 10 per cent. Two series, one direction: the pulses a household buys are getting dearer in the middle of the import surge, not cheaper.
| Retail price, 14 October | 2025 (₹/kg) | 2026 (₹/kg) | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tur dal | 115.31 | 129.96 | +12.7% |
| Urad dal | 113.99 | 124.54 | +9.3% |
| Chana dal | 87.24 | 91.64 | +5.0% |
| Moong dal | 110.61 | 113.66 | +2.8% |
| Masur dal | 89.50 | 90.93 | +1.6% |
Source: Department of Consumer Affairs price data as reported 14 October 2026. Farmioc.
U — Upturn in imports: two-thirds more in five months
India imported 5.96 million tonnes of pulses in FY26, down nearly 18 per cent on the year before. The current year has reversed hard: imports rose 62 per cent to 1.71 million tonnes in April–July, and trade data compiled by Kedia Advisory put April–August imports at 2.06 million tonnes, up 67 per cent, worth $1.18 billion. The mix matters more than the total. Masur shipments jumped 200 per cent to 0.64 million tonnes and yellow peas 114 per cent to 0.62 million tonnes, while tur — the pulse in shortest domestic supply — rose only 10 per cent to 0.35 million tonnes. The surge is concentrated in the two pulses where global supply is easiest to buy, which is why it has not pulled retail prices down.
L — Levies: the duty line is not moving
Consumer Affairs Secretary Nidhi Khare told Mint on 14 October that the government has no plans to cut import duties on pulses yet, banking instead on domestic crop prospects and adequate global supplies. The structure she defended is specific: a 10 per cent duty on lentils and chana, 30 per cent on yellow peas, and tur and urad admitted free of duty until 31 March 2027. For an importer pricing a December shipment, that statement removes one whole branch of speculation: landed costs will be set by origin prices, freight and the rupee, not by a tariff surprise from New Delhi.
S — Sowing gave area, not yet supply
The domestic leg of the government's case is acreage. Kharif pulses covered 12.24 million hectares as of 2 October, up from 11.98 million hectares a year earlier and close to the normal 12.36 million hectares — tur up 149,000 hectares to 4.79 million, urad up 296,000 hectares to 2.66 million, moong down 117,000 hectares to 3.37 million. Area is a promise, not a harvest. More than 80 per cent of India's pulse acreage is rain-fed, and this year's monsoon ended deficient. Yield, not acreage, will decide how much of that 12.24 million hectares reaches a mandi, and the yield answer arrives with the kharif harvest over the next two months.
E — Exposure ahead: a slow rabi and a firm spot market
The forward leg looks tighter. Rabi pulses sowing stood at 945,000 hectares on 30 October, down 51.7 per cent, with chana at 590,000 hectares against 1,435,000 a year ago. Spot markets are pricing that risk already: on 27 October chana traded at ₹7,650–7,700 per quintal in Indore, ₹7,825–7,850 in Akola and ₹7,625–7,650 in Delhi, on improving miller demand ahead of the festival season. Those prices sit far above the gram MSP of ₹5,875 for the current marketing season and above the ₹5,958 set for 2027-28 in the government's Rabi MSP backgrounder, which also raised lentil to ₹7,390 a quintal. When spot trades this far above the floor, the floor is not the price-setter — arrivals are.
S — Stocks: the buffer is the ceiling
What caps this market is public stock. The central government holds a pulse buffer of approximately 4.5 million tonnes, which officials expect to dampen price spikes through the festive season, and releases from that buffer — alongside continued Australian and Canadian supply — are the balancing force traders themselves cite. The caution runs the other way too: trade sources expect the import pace to moderate in the second half of the fiscal year as Canadian yellow pea and lentil quotes firm on freight bottlenecks and tighter Russian supply. A buyer who assumes April–August import volumes repeat in January–March is planning on the cheapest version of this market.
Decision: price the policy, not just the crop
For dal millers and packaged-food buyers, the working assumptions for this quarter are now unusually clear: duties stay where they are until at least the tur and urad free window closes on 31 March 2027, the buffer will be used to lean on spikes rather than to reprice the market, and the open variable is kharif yield on a rain-fed crop. Coverage bought against those assumptions is defensible; coverage deferred in hope of a duty cut is a bet the Consumer Affairs Secretary has publicly declined to honour. PriceHub tracks mandi prices, arrivals and trade flows across the pulses complex, so a change in any of the three — buffer releases, import pace, harvest arrivals — shows up in the series a procurement desk actually uses.