Govt approves revival of 3 defunct urea plants
The Dollar Business Bureau In a bid to meet the demands of eastern states and help India attain self-sufficiency, the government agreed to revive three closed urea plants at Sindri, Gorakhpur and Barauni at a cost of Rs. 18,000 crore. The Union Cabinet, which was chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, approved the renewal of the three fertilizer plants, each bearing potential of 1.27 million tonnes per annum production capacity. The revival will be done through nomination of Special Purpose Vehicle of PSUs such as Coal India Ltd, NTPC, HFCL, FCIL and Indian Oil Corp Ltd. Ravi Shankar Prasad, Law and IT minister, stated that the decision to revive the plants is the game-changer for eastern India’s economy. In 2015, the government had approved the ...
Indias urea imports decline 23% in April-May
The Dollar Business Bureau India’s urea imports had declined by 23 percent in April-May this year. The imports in April-May were at 7.71 lakh tonnes compared to 10.03 lakh tonnes in the same period year before. Last financial year, urea imports were at 84.74 lakh tonnes, a drop of 3.41 percent, due to higher domestic output. Official data records show India’s urea imports stood at 87.49 lakh tonnes in the fiscal of 2014-15. The production of urea reached its highest ever capacity of 245 lakh tonnes in 2015-16, a surge of 20 lakh tonnes from the previous output in 2014-15. Last year, neem coated urea was made compulsory by the government, as it works as an insecticide and is beneficial to the soil. ...
Price fluctuations in natural gas not to affect urea prices
The Dollar Business Bureau Fluctuations in the price of natural gas might affect urea production subsidy provided by the government, but it will not have any bearing on the price of urea. However, the rise in price of natural gas will increase the subsidy burden on the exchequer as there is a direct impact of rise in gas price on the prices of fertilizers since increase in the price of gas by Rs.1.00 per MMBTU results in the increase of the cost of production of urea by Rs. 25.99 (6.499x4= 25.99) (The weighted average energy norm for all 27 gas based urea units in the country is 6.499 Gcal/MT and 1 Gcal = 3.96 MMBTU~ 4MMBTU). Therefore, the ...
