Fertiliser subsidy bill to come down to Rs one lakh crore

New Delhi, Nov 7 (UNI) With urea price slashed to one-third in the international market and heavy reduction in the prices of other raw materials used by the fertiliser industry, the government's fertiliser subsidy bill is likely to come down by Rs 20,000 crore at nearly Rs 100,000 crore.

Urea, which was recently being sold at 860 dollars per tonne in the international market, has nosedived to mere 255 dollars a tonne.

And, the price of DAP came down to 850 dollar per tonne from 1,300 dollars a tonne with probability of further fall in prices in near future, said Fertilisers and Chemicals Minister Ram Vilas Paswan at a press conference here today.

Similarly, the price of other fertilisers inputs like sulphur, phosphoric acid and ammonia has come down from 860 to 60 dollars a tonne , from 2,600 to 1,300 dollars per tonne and 950 to 350 dollars per tonne respectively.

With the downfall in the prices of imported raw materials, units dependent on such import may achieve production to their full capacity and will help in achieving availability of fertilisers at low costs, said Mr Paswan.

The Minister said there was an adequate supplies of all types of fertilisers, used by the farmers in the county and claimed that, instead, the availability of fertilisers had been made more than the estimated higher requirement of inputs this year.

The government targeted to supply 288 lakh materic tonne (lmt) of urea against the last year's (2007-08) total consumption of 261.67 lmt.

Of that, 158.02 lmt of urea was made available by the end of October,2008, Mr Paswan said.

Similarly, 67.59 lmt of DAP dispatched to rural areas by October-end, while the target for the current year has been fixed at 111 lmt, higher than the last year's consumption of 75.55 lmt.

Besides, about 45 lmt of DAP has been imported during the current year against the import of about 29.78 lmt of DAP preceding year.

The consumption of NPK Complex fertilisers during last year was about 65.53 lmt whereas the availability during this year has been planned at 80 lmt, of which 45.22 lmt has already been dispatched to the farming areas.

At the same time, Mr Paswan said, the state governments had been asked to ensure the distribution of the fertilisers in a manner that local shortages of the inputs were not reported from any area.

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