Govt moves to maintain buffer stock of urea for 'Boro' season

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S M Jahangir
The government has taken steps to maintain a buffer stock of urea fertiliser to ensure its uninterrupted supply to the farmers during the current 'Boro' cultivation season for the sake of achieving the target of producing 1.8 million tonnes of rice, officials said.
"Necessary measures have been taken to ensure adequate supply of fertiliser, especially urea, to farmers in order to face any crisis of the agricultural input during the Boro cropping season," said a senior official of the Ministry of Agriculture (MoA).
Taking into account the previous experiences, the government has prepared a work plan to guard against any supply crisis of urea at the farmers' end during the entire Boro cropping period, the official added.
In this backdrop, preparation is afoot for making more than 1.59 million tonnes of urea available during the December-March period - the peak Boro crop season - against the projected demand for nearly 1.50 million tonnes of urea, official sources said.
They also mentioned that the country's total demand for urea was estimated at 2.85 million tonnes for the current fiscal year (FY) 2008-09.
On the other hand, 2.99 million tonnes of urea are expected to be available by the end of this fiscal, official figures showed.
Of the total, about 1.69 million tonnes of urea are expected to be produced locally while the demand for the remaining 1.30 million tonnes of urea will be met through import, officials said.
According to them, some 0.475 million tonnes of urea will be imported from the Karnaphuli Fertilizer Company Limited (KAFCO) and another 0.5 million tonnes of urea will be procured from external source through tender.
Besides, the government has taken steps to procure 0.323 million tonnes of urea from Qatar, the UAE and Saudi Arabia under the government-to-government deals, they mentioned.
Apart from the supply arrangement, the authorities have taken necessary measures to streamline the distribution of urea through authorised dealers across the country to ensure the farmers' easy access to the main agro-input, they said.
They further said the number of authorised dealers has already been increased at the union level to make the agricultural input easily available to Boro farmers, they added.
A senior MoA official also said the authorities have initiated a move to enhance the use of 'guti' (granule) urea, taking into account the prevailing misuse or wastage of a significant quantity of urea.
Guti urea was used on 0.5 million (5 lakh) hectares of land in the last Boro cropping season as against 25,000 hectares of the previous year.
Besides, steps have also been taken to ensure the use of at least 10 tonnes of composite fertilisers in every block during the current Boro cropping season to help reduce the country's growing dependence on imported fertilisers, a senior MoA official said.
Apart from the supply arrangement, the government has also decided to strictly monitor and supervise the overall fertiliser distribution system through both central and regional-level monitoring committees to prevent its supply crisis.