India's urea imports rose by 23% to 87.49 lakh tonnes in FY15

10 Apr 2015 Evaluate

India's urea imports rose by 23% to 87.49 lakh tonnes last fiscal on higher demand. The country, which is among the world's top three consumers of urea, imported 70.88 LT of the fertilizer in 2013-14. Overall, the country produces about 22 million tonnes urea as against the annual domestic demand of 30 MT. The country's urea imports had dipped 12% to 7.08 MT in 2013-14 due to carry-over stocks from the previous year. It had imported 8.04 MT of urea in the entire 2012-13 fiscal.

Urea is imported by three state trading enterprises (STEs), Indian Potash, MMTC and STC on behalf of the government to meet domestic shortfall. The government also imports fertilizer through OMIFCO, which is a joint venture project of IFFCO and Kribhco, with an off-take agreement.

Though, STEs imported urea at average price of about $300 per tonne, lower than the previous year's average price of about $322 per tonne, urea shipped by OMIFCO is much cheaper than STEs' soil nutrient.

Urea is provided to farmers at a fixed subsidized maximum retail price of Rs 5,360 per tonne. The difference between the cost of production and MRP of urea is provided as subsidy to manufacturers.

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