Time for Fertiliser Subsidy to Reach Farmers' Bank Account via DBT: RM Deshpande at FAI Annual Seminar

R.M. Deshpande, the Senior Executive Director of Nagarjuna Fertilizers & Chemicals Limited based in Hyderabad, Telangana was the second speaker of the second session on day 3 of the Annual FAI seminar 2021. 

His report on DBT/iFMS- Issues and suggested measures in which he spoke extensively on the evolution of the Fertiliser management system and how it, later on, went on to be integrated with the Mobile Fertiliser Management system to form the Integrated fertiliser management system was enlightening. 

Deshpande also pointed out key issues that were currently found in the current integrated fertiliser management system (IFMS) and Point of Sale machines and DBT system in India currently. 

He also explained that the transformation of FMS and MFMS into IFMS was with the ultimate objective of the introduction of actual DBT on fertilizers and that the current IFMS caters for the purpose of hybrid DBT, where the subsidy is paid to fertilizer producers and importers based on sales of subsidized fertilizers by the retailers to farmers through POS devices, which is captured in IFMS. 

Deshpande went on to say that the IFMs system was working well and now the time is to extend and implement the software system for Direct Bank Transfer payments of subsidy into the bank accounts of the farmers. Deshpande’s explanation in his paper “DBT/IFMS- Issues and Suggested Measures” was actually displayed in the second half of the third day of FAI’s seminar. The main topic of this half was “Strategies for fertiliser marketing”.  

Marketing experts from the Fertiliser Industry like V.S Sirohi, Deshpande and Sanjeev Kanwar came forward with extensively researched reports on this day to enlighten the attendees on this topic.

The moderator of this session was S. Narayanan who is currently the Director of Marketing for Greenstar Fertilizers Limited, Chennai, Tamil Nadu.