Amidst the continuously worsening situation in West Asia, there is fear of crisis on many important things across the world. Concerns are also being raised regarding the availability of fertilizers. Meanwhile, in view of the upcoming Kharif season, the Government of India has made special preparations to ensure that there is no shortage of fertilizers and is ensuring the work on two fronts i.e. increasing domestic production and purchasing fertilizers through global tender.
The government has sufficient quantity of fertilizers for the Kharif season. However, considering the global situation, the government has also started working on different strategies. With the record increase in domestic production, the purchase of fertilizer is being decided through global tender.
The Government of India has purchased natural gas for fertilizer production through Empowered Pool Management Committee (EPMC). India has started getting additional gas of 7.31 MMSCMD (Million Metric Standard Cubic Meters per Day) through spot purchase from the international market. With this supply, the production of fertilizer in India is expected to increase by 23 percent. Till now, India's urea plants were getting around 32 MMSCMD of natural gas, but now this capacity has increased to 39.31 MMSCMD.
In this way, by getting additional natural gas, urea production in India will increase by 23 percent. In such a situation, domestic urea production has increased from 54,500 to 67,000 metric tons per day. In this way, the supply of gas purchased through spot trading in the global tender will increase to more than 76 percent. Earlier the supply rate to urea plants of the country was 62 percent.
India has adequate fertilizer reserves available this year compared to last year. The stock of all types of fertilizers including Urea, DAP was 138.79 LMT in March last year, which has increased to 180.04 LMT this year. This stock is 29.72 percent more than on March 19 last year. At the same time, double increase has been recorded in the stock of DAP. Last year it was 11.85 LMT which increased to 24.24 LMT this year.
In view of the tense situation at many places globally, during the inter-ministerial press conference, External Affairs Ministry spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal said that in view of the international situation, the government is moving forward and taking many effective decisions. We have adequate reserves of fertilizer, especially for the Kharif crop. We are completely confident. Also, the Department of Fertilizers also issued global tenders in time, which received positive response. We expect that most of the orders from different sources will reach India by the end of March.
