Urea pricing: a hot potato no one wants to touch

Urea pricing: a hot potato no

one wants to touch

Despite loud thinking and numerous expert reports over the years, the UPA Government is yet to muster courage to decontrol urea. It has also dragged its feet over clearing the much-discussed 10 per cent hike in retail prices of urea.

 

by Naresh Minocha

 

‘Urea is the one fertiliser the pricing of which affects all sections of farmers, including marginal and small farmers’

– Joint Committee on Fertiliser Pricing in August 1992 seeking a 10 per cent cut in urea prices.

 

Urea has remained a hot political potato ever since the Government accepted the recommendations of the country’s first-ever Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) on pricing of any product. Today, the political class ensures that its statutory price remains one of the lowest in the world. It thus retails at a price, which is not even half the price of branded table salt. Urea’s overuse and its diversion to chemical producers and smuggling to neighbouring countries is thus subsidy-driven...Read More