Year-on-year Urea production in Pakistan surges 10% in 2019

ISLAMABAD: Domestic companies managed to achieve urea production of 6.17 million tons in 2019. According to the figures released by the National Fertiliser Development Centre (NFDC) on Thursday, the production was 10% higher compared to 5.6 million tons produced in 2018.

Domestic production of the commodity increased due to better gas availability to the sector and the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf government’s decision to revive closed urea plants by providing them RLNG at subsidised rate in order to facilitate farmers.

“Urea sales were expected to be on higher side due to shift in crop cycle and lower inventory carried by dealers this time,” said Foundation Securities research analyst Usman Arif.

“Improved gas availability due to lower demand from power plants resulted in better gas supply to Engro Fertilizer from Mari gas fields which produced additional 0.2 million tons of urea in 2019.”

Fertiliser prices during 2019 increased by 12% partly due to government’s decision to hike gas prices for fertiliser feed/fuel gas by 62/31% in July 2019 to meet IMF pre-conditions. 

Published in The Express Tribune, January 26^th, 2020.

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