Obaidul Ghani
The government is likely to revise the fertiliser distribution system, which now depends on the recommendation of the inter-ministerial committee, said the agriculture secretary on Saturday.
However, the government plans to revive the function of the inter-ministerial committee in couple of days as the committee usually look after the policy of fertiliser distribution system, agriculture secretary Sheikh Enayetullah told reporters at a news conference at the ministry.
The government will strictly monitor the implementation of new price schedule for the sale of non-urea fertilisers at the farmers’ level during the peak boro season from January to March, he said.
The government will not tolerate any irregularities regarding the sale of non-urea fertilisers at exorbitant rate than the new price scheduled by the government and its distribution at the field level, the agriculture secretary said.
‘The government will strictly monitor the new selling price of the non-urea fertilisers—triple super phosphate (TSP), muriate of potash (MOP) and di-amonium phosphate (DAP), which has been re-fixed by the newly elected government on the first day it took charge,, he added.
As part of the initiative, the government has already asked the deputy commissioners of each district to regularly monitor the sale of fertilisers under the government fixed rates. At the same time, the government will centrally monitor the price situation of the fertiliser after preparing a regular report based on the information of each district received by the monitoring cell at the ministry.
The government will take stern disciplinary action against the government officials as well as the fertiliser dealers in case of any involvement in irregularities, the agriculture secretary warned.
On the demand of fertiliser, the ministry high official, however. said that the demand of non-urea fertilisers for peak boro season is –some 1.34 lakh tonnes TSP, 1.08 lakh tonnes MoP and some 60,000 tonnes DAP while the BADC, BCIC and the private sector have the stock of some 3.19 lakh tonnes TSP, some 2.19 lakh tonnes MoP and 48,400 tonnes DAP.
On January 14, the government announced about 55 per cent subsidy on non-urea fertilisers to roughly halve their prices—as a result of the subsidies, the effective prices of the TSP has come down to Tk 40 from Tk 75-80, MoP to Tk 35 from Tk 65-75 and of DAP to Tk 45 from Tk 80-85, per kilogram.
Under the increased subsidy programme, the government will hand out Tk 2,756 crore for non-urea fertilisers—while some Tk 1,520 crore would be required for the Bangladesh Agricultural Development Corporation and Bangladesh Chemical Industries Corporation and Tk 1,236 crore for the private sector importers.
Courtesy: newagebd.com