Centre to bring more reforms, not to raise urea prices: Kumar

Fertiliser Minister Ananth Kumar today said government will continue with the second generation "farmer centric" reforms in the sector to make the country self-sufficient in urea without increasing its prices.
"Narendra Modi led government will continue with second generation reforms, there will be far reaching reforms in coming days without increasing the prices of fertilisers, especially urea," Kumar said.
The Minister added that there are more reforms in the pipeline, especially on providing alternative to farmers for fertilisers.
"There are various reforms in the pipeline including for the Single Super Phosphate (SSP) industry and providing incentives on compost made from the city garbage," Kumar said.

The Minister said it was misconception that there can not be reforms in the fertiliser sector without increasing the prices.
"It was misconception that there can not be reforms in the sector without increasing urea prices. We believe in farmer centric reforms for the fertiliser sector, which also improves the overall financial health of the industry," he added.

Earlier in the day, the Union Cabinet today approved a new urea policy that aims to make the country self-sufficient in production in the next four years and ensure timely supply of the soil nutrient to farmers.
Kumar said that the new urea policy which has been approved by Cabinet is one of such steps.

"The new urea policy which will be valid till 2019, will incentivise the plants to be more energy efficient and proposes to incentives to them for producing more nutrients in more efficient manner," he said.
The Fertiliser Minister said that this will result in increase of 2 million tonnes of production per annum and would reduce the subsidy bill by Rs 4,800 crore.