The Punjab government has urged the Federal Government to either revisit its gas curtailment policy for the fertiliser manufacturing units or make arrangements on war footing for import of urea fertiliser to meet the domestic demands. Total urea requirement of the country for Rabi season is estimated at over 3.3 million tonnes while with the present gas policy for the fertiliser manufacturing units, total domestic production will be around 2.3 million tonnes, thus showing a short fall of 10,00,000 tonnes. This was stated by the Punjab Minister for Agriculture Malik Ahmad Ali Aulakh, while addressing a joint press conference with Punjab Law Minister Rana Sanaullah here on Monday. Provincial Agriculture Secretary Nadeem Arif was also present on this occasion.
Aulakh said shortage in Khareef season had already hit cotton, rice, sugarcane, maize and fodder crops. He complained that Punjab, which has an 80 per cent share in agriculture production was not even provided quota from the imported fertiliser, which was according to its share in production. He said that around 1,24,000 tonnes of urea had reached Gwadar and Karachi out of which 39,000 tonnes had been provided to Punjab. He said that the shortage also caused an unprecedented hike in the price of urea fertiliser, reaching to Rs1380 per bag from Rs850 per bag in December 2010.
They said that the government has to take immediate steps for import of urea as it takes 50 days from floating of tender to arrival of the shipment. Urea is utilised in Rabi season especially for wheat from October 15 to end of November, they added and said that in Punjab alone wheat is sown on an average of 1.5 million acres of land every year. Wheat and other crops of Rabi require about 2.4 million tonnes of urea in Punjab alone. However, nine fertiliser manufacturing units of Pakistan could hardly produce 2.3 million tonnes of the fertiliser during the Rabi season with present rate of gas provision. He claimed that production capacity of nine manufacturing units is more than the total consumption of urea in the country. He said our domestic units can produce 6.9 million tonnes of urea fertiliser while total domestic requirement is 6.4 million tonnes, which implies a 500,000 tonnes surplus. However, the present gas provision policy is hampering full functioning of these units. He said that domestic production of urea was estimated at 3.118 million tonnes for Khareef 2011-12 but this target could not be achieved.
Malik Ahmad Ali Aulakh said that the province was harvesting good wheat crop for the last three years but if the urea shortage persists, then there are fears of a negative impact on the wheat crop this season. He said that negative impact on wheat production will also negatively impact the GDP. He said according to fertiliser policy 2001, ensuring availability of fertiliser is the responsibility of the federal government but it has not taken any step in this regard. He said that taking import decisions is a lengthy process but nothing has so far been done in this regard. He said that fertiliser required for Rabi season should have been made available by the end of the current month, so to avoid any panic and unrest among the farmers community.
