CITU strongly opposes the Government’s decision to increase the Urea price by 10 per cent and to deregulate prices of other fertilizers. CITU also denounces much opposed Nutrient Based Subsidy (NBS) scheme for phosphatic and potassic fertilizers.
The decisions once again exposes Government’s total insensitive approach and apathy to the plight of the people reeling under skyrocketing price of essential commodities, mainly the food items. The Government has renewed its attempts to deregulate the prices of essential agricultural inputs like fertilizer to allow the manufacturers to garner huge profits through sale of their products at global price under Import Parity Price (IPP) method, which is most unrealistic and has no link with the actual production cost.
CITU strongly feels that this decision coupled with Government’s effort to increase the price of Diesel will destabilize the food security of the India, specially when the country is facing severe draught and flood situations in various parts of country and the agricultural productivity has declined. The so called explanation given in favour of the NBS that it will depict the actual demand of the fertilizers in the country and promote realistic pricing of fertilizers in the internationals market, is a reprehensible attempt to mislead the people when actual objective of the Corporate - friendly Government is to allow the fertilizer producers to hike the prices of their products to the level of International price. Deregulation of pricing in fertilizer industry to attract fresh investment in this sector is yet another attempt to disown the responsibility of reviving the closed fertilizer units in public sector, namely, Durgapur, Haldia (West Bengal), Sindri (Jharkhand), Baruni(Bihar), Talcher (Orissa), Gorakhpur (U.P) and Ramagundam (A.P) through public investment and to gurantee windfall profits to private players.
CITU, therefore, urges upon the Government to withdraw the disastrous decision forthwith and declare:
a) Regulation of prices for all types of fertilizers in order to achieve self-sufficiency in fertilizer production to ensure food security on the country.
b) Time bound commitment to revive the closed fertilizer units in Public Sector.
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