Steps taken to ensure urea supply in country: Govt

New Delhi, Nov 29 (UNI) The Government has initiated a number of steps to further improve availability of urea in all parts of the country, the Lok Sabha was informed today.

Replying to a question, Minister of State for Chemicals and Fertilizer B K Handique said each State was now required to prepare a monthly supply plan for ensuring availability of fertilizers on a month-wise, company wise and district-wise format.

Since the district and not the State was the basis of planning for fertilizer availability, the subsidy was now being paid to fertilizer companies only on supplying fertilizers to each district in conformity with the agreed Supply Plan.

To ensure that fertilizer companies supplying urea were able to supply it to each district, the urea manufacturers were compensated for freight.

The monthly supply plans were being drawn up with minimum pre-positioning of stock for the succeeding month.

The supply of fertilizers by manufacturers/suppliers in according with the agreed Supply Plan was being monitored through a Web-based Fertilizer Monitoring System, which is able to track production, imports, dispatch, arrival and sales upto the district-level.

The State Governments have been advised to (a) strengthen the State institutional agencies which will coordinate with manufacturers and importers of fertilizers for streamlining the supplies (b) undertake assessment of demand at the block level and ensure availability upto the block level (c) review the dealer network in their respective States to ensure sufficient availability of dealers upto the block level. They have also been requested to review the railway infrastructure in their States and suggest improvements required to ensure availability of fertilizers in all parts of their States.

UNI