No short supply of fertilisers for farmers in TN: Arumugham

Chennai, May 7 (UNI) There is no short supply of fertilisers for farmers in Tamil Nadu, Agriculture Minister Veerapandi S Arumugham told the State Assembly today.

Replying to a special call attention motion given notice of by various political parties, he said the Centre had allocated enough fertilisers for the State on the basis of letters written by Chief Minister M Karunanidhi.

He said Mr Karunanidhi, in his April four letter to the Union Fertiliser Minister, had sought allocation of 73,500 metric tonnes of DAP for the State till June following which the Centre in its reply a week later ordered allocation of the fertilisers to the state.

Mr Arumugham said during the April 22 review meeting at New Delhi, the Union Fertilisers Secretary had ordered the manufacturers to provide 40,680 MT (20,000 MT from Coromandel Fertilisers, 10,000 MT from Indian Pottash Limited, 7,500 MT from IFFCO, 1500 MT from Mangalore Chemicals Limited and 1,680 MT from Zuari Industries) to Tamil Nadu.

''These companies will distribute them to the State by May 12,'' he said and added that at present the government has 61,049 MT of Urea, 32,000 MT of Potash, 5,396 MT of DAP, which were enough to ensure uninterrupted supply of fertilisers to the farmers for the months of May and June.

Mr Arumugam said to ensure that there was no short supply of fertilisers to farmers, the state government provided Rs 30 crore to TANFED for procuring 1.04 lakh MT of DAP from Indian Potash Limited and Rashtriya Chemicals and supply to farmers through all the Primary Agriculture Cooperative Banks (PACBs) last year.

Similarly, the state government would allot an additional Rs 20 crore this year and the TANFED, using this Rs 50 crore, would procure DAP from importers and domestic manufacturers and supply to the farmers through all the 3,709 PACBs in the state, he said and added that the government was taking all steps to ensure that there was no short supply of DAP and other fertilisers for the farmers.

UNI GV ROY SY ND1450