KATHMANDU, MAY 24 -
Farmers across the country are likely to face a shortage of fertilizers with the paddy sowing season approaching. State-owned Agriculture Inputs Corporation (AIC) has a stock of only 15,000 tons of fertilizers.

"We will be importing 25,000 tons of urea and 7,500 tons of diammonium phosphate (DAP) from India soon," said AIC's managing director Pashupati Gautam.

He added that 60,000 tons out of the targeted supply of 100,000 tons for this fiscal year had already been distributed. He said that the fertilizers distributed by the AIC fulfil only 20-25 percent of the total demand.  

The government has allocated Rs. 1.50 billion to import over 100,000 tons of chemical fertilizers for the current fiscal year while the requirement is 500,000 tons, said an AIC official.

He added that the AIC had spent Rs 1.22 billion out of the budget allocated for the import of fertilizers. "We are planning

to arrange an additional Rs. 300 million through bank overdrafts," he said.

Gautam said that the AIC had opened a letter of credit (LC) for the import of 10,000 tons of DAP fertilizer from Turkey. It will be opening another LC for the import of 20,000 tons of urea from Turkey soon. The fertilizers imported from Turkey will be distributed in the next fiscal year, as it will take time for the shipment.

The AIC is distributing fertilizers through state-owned cooperatives. Subsidized fertilizers are distributed to farmers as per their land holdings. Farmers having 4 hectares of land in the Tarai and 15 ropanis in the hills are eligible to receive the subsidized fertilizers. According to Ministry of Agriculture and cooperatives, the country's overall grain production (paddy, wheat, maize, barley and millet) has declined by 4.33 percent in the current fiscal year compared to the last fiscal year.

A production report revealed that this fiscal year overall grain production dropped to 7.76 million tons. In the last fiscal year, overall grain output was recorded at 8.11 million tons.

Paddy production declined by about 11 percent to 4.02 million tons. Last year, paddy production was 4.52 million tons. Agriculture experts said the fall in the grain production this year has been attributed to lack of modern irrigation facilities and insufficient use of chemical fertilizers.


Posted on: 2010-05-25 07:45

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