The fertilizer sector faced yet another year of dismal performance due to what market observers said was an unprecedented cut in the supply of gas.
The SNGPL based fertilizer plants lost production by 89 percent during the calendar year 2012, said a spokesman of the Fertilizer Manufacturers of Pakistan Advisory Council (FMPAC).
Out of total production capacity of over 2.2 million tons, the SNGPL based fertilizer producing units produced only 256,500 tons of urea, the lowest ever production by these fertilizer plants in the history of this sector. “Producing only 11.6 percent of the total urea production capacity of SNGPL based fertilizer plants shows the worst ever gas curtailment being faced by the fertilizer plants in the country,” the spokesman said.
The combined urea production figures are also very dismal as the whole fertilizer sector on SNGPL as well as Mari network only produced 4.1 million tons of urea compared to 4.8 million tons it produced last year against an installed capacity of 6.9 million tons.
The overall production loss of 2.8 million tons in a year has never been witnessed before. Currently, all four fertilizer plants on SNGPL network are facing a complete shutdown, which has resulted in severe production and financial losses for the sector. Four Fertilizer Plants on the SNGPL network including Pakarab, Dawood Hercules, Engro’s new plant and Agritech remained the main victims of the chaotic gas situation in the country.
Year 2011 and 2012 have been the worst years for fertilizer sector. Instead of providing gas to local fertilizer plants to produce economical and affordable urea domestically, the government preferred to import Urea by spending a hefty amount of over $ 1 billion from precious foreign exchange. The spokesman said fertilizer sector has been witnessing a steep fall in its production as it produced 5 million tons of urea in 2009 against a capacity of 5 million, 5.15 million tons against 5.6 million tons of capacity in 2010, 4.9 million tons against 6.9 million tons capacity in 2011 and finally 4.1 million tons against the total production capacity of 6.9 million tons in 2012.
According to the FMPAC spokesman, despite the unprecedented gas curtailment in the last two years, domestic urea manufacturing plants have provided Rs 365 billion benefit to farmers over the last 5 years, by keeping local urea prices significantly below international levels. He said there is a misconception that fertilizer manufacturers enjoy raw material subsidy from the government in the form of reduced feed gas prices. This subsidy is not for the manufacturers, but is in fact passed on to the farmer via reduced prices, he said. Based on current feed and fuel gas prices, subsidy per bag of urea works out to be Rs 228 per bag. In essence if government subsidy on gas price was taken away, urea prices would only increase by Rs 228 per bag.
On the other hand, difference between price of domestic and international urea is more than Rs 1,000 per bag. Therefore, he said that not only is the fertilizer industry passing on feed gas subsidy to the farmer, it is also passing on a much larger benefit voluntarily in addition to paying taxes to government.
He said that of the total urea price increase in the last two years, about 80 percent has resulted from imposition of GST on urea and general inflation. Only 20 percent of the price increase is due to gas curtailment because the government did not honour its gas supply contracts with fertilizer manufacturers despite the fact that the industry has recently invested $2.3 billion in the country based on the government approved policy designed to encourage investment in the sector.
The FMPAC spokesman said the government has also incurred significant losses by importing urea worth over $ 1 billion and providing subsidy of over Rs 50 billion on imported urea in the last 2 years.
Urea is the most expensive form of energy that is imported costing around $23/MMBTU, whereas RFO and LNG would be 30-50 percent less expensive than urea on a MMBTU basis, he added.
He said that government must realize that agriculture contributes around 24 percent to the GDP of Pakistan and it also provides raw materials to all major industries of Pakistan including, textiles and sugar. For the economy of Pakistan to prosper, it is important for agricultural yields to go up which is only possible through the application of fertilizers in the right quantity at the right time, he said.
The decline in urea production poses a severe threat to crops yield and thus the country might miss its agriculture and export targets and further risk the food security of the country by depending on imported food items.
