Fertiliser sales slide as poor rains cloud kharif season

NEW DELHI: Fertiliser sales dropped significantly during April-August, covering much of the kharif season-India's largest planting season when farmers grow crops such as rice, pulses and oilseeds-with urea and di-ammonium phosphate (DAP) purchases declining 5.9% and 2.5%, respectively, year-on-year.

The decline came amid rainfall deficiency and drought-like conditions in several parts of the country, which weighed on farmers' spending on soil nutrients even as overall kharif sowing remained only about 2% below last year's level, industry executives said. Sales of NP/NPK (nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium) complex fertilisers fell even more sharply, declining 19.4% while sales of muriate of potash (MOP) dropped 13.6%, according to provisional data from the Fertiliser Association of India (FAI) sourced from industry executives.

Urea sales during April-August fell to 15.82 million tonnes from 16.80 mt in the year-ago period. DAP sales declined to 3.38 mt from 3.47 mt while NP/NPK complex fertiliser sales dropped to 5.33 mt from 6.61 mt. MOP sales for direct application fell to 783,500 tonnes from 906,600 tonnes. Month-wise data show that the weakness was not uniform throughout the season. Lower sales came despite a sharp increase in the availability of some fertilisers through imports.

Urea imports more than doubled to 4.75 million tonnes during April-August from 2.04 mt a year earlier, an increase of 133.2%, even as sales fell 5.9%. Domestic urea production, meanwhile, rose 4.4% to 12.54 mt. The trend was different for DAP and NP/NPK complexes, where both domestic production and imports declined on account of high prices of raw material, mainly sulphur due to the west Asia crisis.