The Minister of Chemicals and Fertilizers of India, Mansukh Mandaviya, has stated that India is vigorously promoting domestic production to bridge the supply-demand gap. By the end of 2025, India aims to eliminate its dependence on urea imports and halt urea imports.
The supply of fertilizers is crucial for Indian agriculture. For the past 60 to 65 years, India has been using fertilizers to increase crop yields. Mansukh Mandaviya pointed out that India needs approximately 35 million tons of urea annually to meet its domestic demand, while currently, there is a gap of about 4 million tons between production and demand. The government has adopted a dual strategy to end its dependence on urea imports. On one hand, efforts are underway to promote alternative fertilizers such as nano liquid urea and nano liquid diammonium phosphate (DAP). On the other hand, India's installed capacity has increased from 22.5 million tons in 2014-2015 to about 31 million tons currently. With the commissioning of the fifth plant, India's annual urea production capacity will reach about 32.5 million tons, with plans to replace 2-2.5 million tons of traditional urea with nano liquid urea.
Last month, Mansukh Mandaviya reported that due to increased demand for nano liquid urea and government discouragement of fertilizer use, traditional urea consumption in India decreased by an estimated 2.5 million tons in the previous fiscal year. The cooperative organization IFFCO introduced nano liquid urea several years ago and has provided technical support for other companies to establish nano urea plants. From August 2021 to February 2024, a total of 70 million rupees worth of nano urea bottles (each bottle containing 500 milliliters) were sold in India. One bottle of nano urea is equivalent to one bag (45 kilograms) of conventional urea.
According to government data, urea consumption in India for the year 2022-2023 was 35.7 million tons, with imports amounting to 7.58 million tons, a decrease of 17% compared to the previous year. Urea imports for the years 2020-2021 were 9.8 million tons, 2019-2020 were 9.1 million tons, and 2018-2019 were 7.5 million tons.
Mansukh Mandaviya emphasized that the Indian government has ensured an adequate supply of fertilizers to the agricultural sector over the past decade, and has also protected Indian farmers from the significant increase in global market fertilizer prices by increasing subsidies for key crop nutrients. For the fiscal year 2024-2025, the government has allocated 1.64 trillion rupees for fertilizer subsidies, around 1.89 trillion rupees for the fiscal year 2023-2024, and as high as 2.55 trillion rupees for the fiscal year 2022-2023.
Source: Economic Times
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