Union Minister of Chemicals and Fertilizers, and Health and Family Welfare, Dr Mansukh Mandaviya inaugurated Fertiliser Association of India (FAI) Annual Seminar 2022(Fertilizer Sector by 2030) at New Delhi today.
Shri Arun Singhal, Secretary Department of Fertilizers, Shri Arvind Chaudhary, DG FAI, Shri KS Raju, Chairman FAI and representatives of Industries and other senior officials of the Ministry were also present on the occasion.
While addressing the occasion, Dr Mansukh Mandaviya stated that one of the important components for ensuring food security is fertilizers. He said that during the last three years, there has been a huge increase in fertilizers and raw materials prices.
The Minister informed “our government has brought various reforms and ensured that fertilizers are made available at affordable prices to Indian farmers. We have done this by increasing the amount of fertilizer subsidy from US dollars 10 Billion for the pre-pandemic year 2019-20 to almost US dollars 27 Billion in the current year.
The Minister further said “The world today faces severe challenges in the rising costs and availability of fertilizers. There is a dire need for our global partners to have reasonable and transparent mechanisms and take long-term views in dealing with issues of fertilizers in the larger interest of global food security”.
He added that the world is still dealing with three shocks conflict in Ukraine, the consequences of Covid 19 and climatic disturbances. Together these factors make a powerful case to grow our supply chains and strengthen self-reliance to meet food and health security goals.
Dr. Mandaviya said that “long-term Agreements and MoUs will have an important role to play in making steady progress in this direction. Our government has facilitated various such agreements and MoUs between Indian Fertilizer companies and foreign suppliers to ensure stability in fertilizer supplies to our farmers”.
He said that “India’s economic recovery is propelled by reforms in various areas including manufacturing, labour, agriculture, education, and of course, improving the ease of doing business. Towards this direction, concrete steps are taken to promote `Make in India’ in the fertilizer sector by reviving 5 closed urea plants.
By 2025, India will become self-sufficient in urea. One of the recently introduced schemes of our government is “One Nation One Fertilizer” under which Urea, MOP, DAP and NPK will be sold under the uniform Bharat brand to bring uniformity in the quality and brands”.
The Minister also informed another initiative introduced is the concept of “Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samriddhi Kendras” to convert all retail fertilizer outlets of about 3 lakhs into single window service centres for the farmers.
The Chemical and Fertilizers Minister strongly urged the industry to look at developing new farm solutions for improving nutrient use efficiency as it positively impacts the entire value chain and will significantly help in achieving sustainable goals.
He also said that the industry must drive research efforts towards alternative fertilizers and new-age smart solutions. Nano fertilizers are an excellent example towards optimizing efficiency, economy and ecology.
On this occasion, Union Minister also released three FAI publications and FAI Data portal. This portal will create a uniform data base and avoid manual input of data by FAI.
This year FAI Annual Seminar is devoted to the theme ‘Fertilizer Sector by 2030’ and there will be presentation on technologies for green fertilizers, worldwide developments in sustainability area, sustainable agriculture, green financing and optimizing cost of logistics.
The presentations and discussion in the Seminar will result in some useful recommendations which will be useful for policy makers and for all those concerned with farm and fertilizer sectors.