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The demand for fertilisers during the forthcoming rabi season is expected to go up substantially as better soil moisture content and greater availability of water in reservoirs may push farmers to plant more.
Accordingly, the government has made provisions for higher stock of all fertilisers, including urea. As per presentations made at a meeting on rabi campaign convened here on Friday by the Agriculture Ministry, the expected requirement of urea during the 2019-20 rabi season would be 17.4 million tonnes (mt), nearly seven per cent more than 16.24 mt consumed in the corresponding period last year.
Similarly higher demand is expected for other fertilisers as well. While the assessed requirement of di-ammonium phosphate for the coming rabi season is 5.16 mt as against 4.6 mt used in the previous season, the stocks of NPK complex fertiliser to be made available will be 5.01 mt, nearly 17 per cent more than what was consumed in the previous rabi season. The demand for potassic fertilisers such as MOP is expected to be even higher.
While the fertiliser industry was expecting the demand for fertilisers to go up on account of better monsoon rains this year, the actual demand may be even higher than what was anticipated. The Fertiliser Association of India in a note said there would be a modest 2-3 per cent growth in demand for fertilisers this year.
It said the demand would be higher than earlier estimates because of better rains received subsequently. Fertiliser offtake in the first three months of the current kharif season was lower than during the year-ago period, but as most parts of the country started receiving good rains since July, there was a spurt in offtake, a source said.
States’ demand
At the rabi conference, some States such as Telangana, requested the Centre to increase their quota of fertilisers as there is an increase in acreage, particularly of crops such as rice, pushing up fertiliser demand in those States.
Kharif sowing data released by the Agriculture Ministry on Friday also showed that the country as a whole has inched closer to planting as much area sown till the corresponding week last year. As of now, kharif planting has covered 1,054 lakh hectares so far as against nearly 1,056 lakh hectares sown the same week in the previous season.
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