The demand for fertilisers in the upcoming Rabi season is likely to increase substantially as improved soil moisture content and greater availability of water in reservoirs may push growers to plant more.
The Centre has made provisions for higher stock of all fertilisers that includes urea. According to the presentations made at a meeting on rabi campaign by the Agriculture Ministry on Friday, the estimated requirement of urea in the 2019-20 rabi season will be 17.4 million tonnes (mt), almost 7% more than 16.24 mt consumed in the equivalent period last year.
Likewise higher demand is expected for other fertilisers too. While the assessed requirement of di-ammonium phosphate for the forthcoming Rabi season is 5.16 mt in comparison to 4.6 mt used in the previous season. The stocks of NPK complex fertiliser to be made available will be 5.01 mt that is 17% more than what was used in the previous season. The demand for potassic fertilisers like MOP is likely to be even higher.
The fertiliser industry was hoping the demand for fertilisers to go up because of good monsoon rains this year - the actual demand could be even higher than what was expected. The Fertiliser Association of India said that there will be a modest 2 to 3% growth in demand for fertilisers in 2019.
It further said that the demand will be higher than previous estimates due to better rainfall received subsequently. Fertiliser offtake in the first 3 months of the current kharif season was lower than last year same period, but as most parts of the country started witnessing good rainfall since July, there was a gush in offtake, according to a source.
During the Rabi conference, some States like Telangana had requested the government to increase their quota of fertilisers as there is a rise in acreage, mainly of crops such as rice, pushing up demand of fertilisers in those States.
The Agriculture Ministry had released Kharif sowing data on Friday, which showed that India as a whole has inched closer to planting as much area sown till the equivalent week last year. Till so far, kharif planting has covered 1,054 lakh hectares as against 1,056 lakh hectares sown the same week in the last season.
