ISLAMABAD: Farmers' representative organisation Pakistan Kissan Ittihad (PKI) has urged the government to ensure sufficient supply of urea fertilizer on controlled rates to the growers in the market to achieve wheat production target of 26.78 million tons for Rabi season 2020-21.
The price of urea fertilizer has increased from Rs1,660 per 50kg bag in November to Rs1,800 per 50kg bag due to limited supply of the fertilizer, said PKI President Khalid Mehmood Khokhar.
He said the price of urea fertilizer might further increase, and cross Rs2,000 per 50kg bag in the coming days.
He said the use of urea fertilizer application on the wheat crop reached its peak from mid-December to February.
The reason for the increase in the price of urea fertilizer was the closure of two urea manufacturing plants (AGRITECH and FATIMA-DH) in December, 2020, due to non-allocation of gas to those plants which resulted in shortage of urea and increase in price, he said.
Khokhar said the combined production capacity of those two plants could add an additional 70,000 metric tons of urea per month in the system and most importantly, ease supply constraints in the market.
He said wheat crop's productivity for Rabi 2020-21 remained crucial for Pakistan's food security considering three million metric tons of wheat had to be imported in 2020 to bridge the supply-demand gap and consequently, control its market prices.
Wheat has been sown on more than 22 million acres in Pakistan. With this achievement, there had been a sizeable increase in demand for urea fertilizer, he said.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2020
Comments
Comments are closed for this article.