Prepared to meet full fertiliser demand in rabi season: Minister

The government is prepared to fulfil the complete fertiliser demand of farmers during the ongoing rabi season, Union Minister for Chemicals and Fertilisers D V Sadananda Gowda said Wednesday.

The Indian crop season is classified into two main periods -- kharif (JulyOctober) and rabi (October-March).a, who assumed the additional charge of the ministry mid-last month following the demise of his ministerial colleague Ananth Kumar, was briefing reporters about the availability of fertiliser stock for the rabi season.

"...there is sufficient field stock of fertilisers available in all the states, which is adequate to address any emergent issue," he said.

Speaking on the supply, he said the ministry is in day-to-day coordination with the Indian Railways for movement of fertilisers across the country.

"Last kharif season, the railways cooperated to a considerable extent. We have got 250 more rakes to supply. There is no dearth in supply of fertilisers. We will try to supply to states nearly 50 per cent of stock in advance, so that there is no problem for farmers," the minister said.

For rabi season, the minister said, the requirement of urea is estimated at 155.84 lakh tonne.

The entire quantity required for the current rabi season, especially during peak consumption months of December 2018 and January 2019, is expected to be met by domestic production of about 129 LMT and the remaining through imports.

"We have planned how much urea we have to import to match the requirement here with indigenous production in our country. We have already planned to import 25 lakh metric tonnes," he said.

Meanwhile, the ministry said in a statement the production of P&K (phosphatic and potassic) fertilisers is also going on in the country and importers are importing P&K under the open general licence (OGL) to fulfil the field requirement.