Co raises urea price by Rs150/50-kg bag Engro told to justify hike

ISLAMABAD: Under the directives of the Federal Minister for Industries and Production Mir Hazar Khan Bijarani, the ministry has taken a serious note of increasing unilaterally the urea price by Rs190 per 50-kg bag by Engro Fertilizers Ltd.

“This is indeed alarming”, says a statement issued by the Ministry of Industries and Production here Thursday. The statement said that it has been further ascertained that only one urea manufacturer has introduced this price increase, adding manufacturer has been asked to explain this increase immediately to the Fertilizer Price Review Committee (FPRC). Moreover, the government fully believes that, when sufficient stocks of urea are available in the country then there is no justification, at all, of increasing urea prices by one manufacturer, the statement added. It is pertinent to mention here that, as per commitment made by the manufacturers in the last meetings held in the Ministry, the manufacturers/ dealers were bound to print retail price on the urea bags.

But the manufacturers/ dealers have not so far followed the decisions and thus committed a clear cut violation of the decisions and CCP rules & regulations. The government is fully aware of the domestic need to make urea available at affordable rates to the growers. Furthermore the government has provided free of cost imported urea to all flood affected farmers. Whereas, at present, one lac tonnes of urea is also available with NFC for Rabi crops and more than 2 lac tonnes of urea is being imported by TCP which is arriving well in time next month i.e. in January, to cater to shortages in domestic urea production foreseen due to energy crunch leading to 20 per cent gas curtailment since May 2010 and the extended winter gas load shedding for 45 days in 2010-11, the statement said. -APP

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