In the CCEA (cabinet committee on economic affairs) meeting on March 31, 2015, the government decided on a uniform gas pricing policy and pooling of domestic and imported liquefied natural gas (LNG) for urea plants. Under it, gas will be supplied at ‘uniform’ delivered price to all urea plants on gas grid through a pooling mechanism. What do these announcements have in store for the industry? Does it mean Modi – dispensation has finally got cracking on big bang reforms in fertilizers after a 10 month wait and 2 full-fledged budgets? Currently, there are a total of 30 urea producing units in India. Of these, 27 are based on gas which is considered to be the most energy efficient and...
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Category: Distribution controls
Urea investment policy – a dream shattered
In January 2013, government had notified a urea investment policy (UIP) for new green field projects; expansion of existing units; additional urea from revamp of existing units and revival projects of sick public sector units of Fertilizer Corporation of India (FCIL) & Hindustan Fertilizer Corporation (HFCL). Early this year, it made two amendments in UIP. The first amendment dispensed with the “dispensation of guaranteed buy-back ” outlined earlier. A second amendment requires interested private companies to give a bank guarantee (BG) of Rs 300 crore for every project, while PSUs firms are exempted from it. (In view of general elections and model code of conduct coming in to force, its notification was kept in abeyance. The amended policy has now...
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Fertilizer Industry in India – Challenges and Way-forward
Fertilizers – key to food security and sustainable agriculture Food security is of paramount importance to meet the growing food needs of an ever increasing population. Not having sufficient domestic production of food to meet requirement of 1.25 billion plus and still expanding will not only put a huge burden on scarce foreign exchange resources but can also expose us to exploitation in global market. Hence, there can be no compromise on this overriding goal. Agriculture has a share of around 15% in gross domestic product (GDP) and nearly 60% of population derives its livelihood from it. Industry and services sectors too depend heavily on it for their rapid and sustained growth. Therefore, agriculture needs to grow rapidly not only...
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