No Brownfield/Greenfield Investment in the Fertilizer sector has taken place since 1999. The availability of gas has been one of the major limiting factor to the growth of urea industry in the country. Presently, the availability of domestic natural gas is not even sufficient to meet the demand of existing gas based urea units in the country. Due to shortage of domestic gas, many FO/LSHS/Naphtha based urea plants which have converted to gas recently, are meeting its requirement of gas by using Regasified Liquefied Natural Gas (RLNG).
New Urea Policy (NUP) – 2015 is under the consideration of the Government. There is no proposal to increase MRP of Urea. The MRP of urea is statutorily fixed by the Government of India and at present it is Rs. 5360 per MT (exclusive of the central excise duty for domestically produced urea and countervailing duty for imported urea (which is 1% at present) and state VAT which differs from state to state). With respect to Neem Coated Urea, it has been decided to restrict the extra 5% of MRP to be charged by the companies for future to the extent of 5% of the existing MRP of urea only i.e. Rs.5360 per MT.
There is no proposal of free supply of fertilizers to help dry land farmers to survive under various circumstances.
This information was given by Shri Hansraj Gangaram Ahir, Minister of State of the Ministry of Chemicals and Fertilizers in the Lok Sabha.