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Ambarish Mukherjee

New Delhi , June 25

AFTER the threat of less than normal monsoon, the agricultural sector may have to brave a scarcity of fertiliser during the coming kharif season.

According to estimates by the Ministry of Fertilisers, production during April 2005 has fallen below target. Government officials said this might lead to poor fertiliser availability during the kharif season.

While urea production during April stood at 13.98 lakh tonnes against the target amount of 15.32 lakh tonnes, DAP production for the month stood at 2.82 lakh tonnes as against the target of 4.07 lakh tonnes.

However, despite poor production, Fertiliser Ministry officials said despatches to the States had been maintained above the targeted amount by making use of inventories in case of urea and imports in case of DAP. The availability in the markets was satisfactory.

Contradicting this view, sources in the Fertiliser Association of India (FAI) held that there was severe scarcity in some States. Some fertiliser manufacturers had received direct calls from Chief Ministers to rush DAP and urea to the States.

Officials said the continued shutdown of Duncan Industries in Kanpur because of financial crunch and the delay in commissioning the Namrup-III plant of Brahmaputra Valley Fertiliser Corporation Ltd were among the main reasons for lower production. Some of the other big plants also faced technical and equipment-related problems, which led to lower overall production.

Technical problems had also hit production in Indian Farmers' Fertiliser Cooperative's (IFFCO) Phulpkur-I plant, National Fertiliser Corporation Ltd (NFCL) Kakinada plant as well as Tata Chemicals and Oswal Chemicals and Fertiliser Ltd's Shahajanpur plant.

In case of DAP, non-availability of raw materials hit the plants as most of them were operating at less that 50 per cent capacity utilisation.

During the month 13.01 lakh tonnes of urea were despatched against the target of 9.40 lakh tonnes. Cumulative availability of urea during the kharif season by the end of April stood at 23.82 lakh tonnes. As regard to decontrolled fertilisers, the cumulative availability of DAP and MoP by the end of April stood at 8.30 lakh tonnes and 7.71 lakh tonnes, officials said.

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