A Disappointing Year for Fertiliser Production

摘要

Indian fertiliser industry has been under performing for last few years. Production of urea declined from 22.7 million tonne in 2013-14 to 22.6 million tonne in 2014-15. This negative growth in urea production happened inspite of the fact that 3 large urea units completed the projects for debottlenecking of capacity in 2013-14 and these plants should have realized the full production from enhanced capacity in 2014-15. Under normal circumstances urea production should have been in the range of 23.5 million tonnes. Similarly production of DAP declined by 5% to 3.4 million tonnes in 2014-15 compared to previous year. The poor performance of fertiliser sector in 2014-15 has also contributed to less than expected growth of manufacturing sector and particularly to the poor growth of core sectors. A scrutiny of causes of production lower than the capacity brings into focus the complexity of policy environment for the sector and delay in decision making in revising these policies.