The government on Sunday reduced urea fertiliser price by Tk 4 a kilogram to lessen agricultural production cost. The agriculture minister, Matia Chowdhury, announced the reduction in the urea price at a press briefing in her ministry.
She said that the urea price was set at Tk 16 a kilogram at dealer and farmer’s level effective from Sunday. The fertiliser was earlier priced at Tk Tk 20 a kilogram.
Matia said that after assuming office, the current government had reduced prices of non-urea fertilisers such as TSP, MOP and DAP from Tk 80 to Tk 22, Tk 70 to Tk 15 and Tk 90 to Tk 27.
Asked about subsidy for the current reduction in urea price, she said that the
government would need to give Tk 680 crore in subsidy on urea fertiliser.
Agriculture ministry officials told New Age that the government imports urea from Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar.
The domestic demand of urea is 24.5 lakh tonnes for the 2013–14 financial year and the government set target to produce about 7.5 lakh tonnes of urea, they said.
About 17 lakh tonnes of urea would need to imported to meet the demand in the current year, they said.
The domestic demand for DAP is about 6.5 lakh tonnes, MOP 8 lakh tonnes and TSP 6.75 lakh tonnes, they said. Almost all non-urea fertilisers are imported for domestic consumption.
Courtesy of New Age
