NEW DELHI, Aug 13 (Reuters) - Indian traders have defaulted on vegetable oil purchase deals of around 150,000-200,000 tonnes due to a drop in prices, the Hindu Business Line newspaper said.

Benchmark Malaysian crude palm oil futures fell 4.1 percent on Tuesday, hitting a fresh 10-month low on faltering crude oil.

Indian importers had lost up to 1.5 billion rupees ($35.2 million) in the past two to three weeks as a result of collapsing market prices, the newspaper said, but did not reveal the source of the information.

On Tuesday, the October contract KPOc3 on the the Bursa Malaysia Derivatives Exchange dropped 110 ringgit to 2,561 ringgit ($770.9) per tonne, breaking well past a key resistance level of 2,600 ringgit for the first time this year.

India’s vegetable oil traders are reneging on contracts to import palm oil as global prices slump and the domestic oilseed crop recovers, a senior trade official told Reuters in an interview on Thursday. India buys almost half of its annual consumption of about 11 million tonnes of vegetable oils in the form of palm oil from Malaysia and Indonesia and soyoil from Brazil and Argentina. (Reporting by Mayank Bhardwaj)

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