Weak demand: Urea sales drop 15% in November

For 11 months, sales stand at 4.97m tons.

KARACHI: Urea sales in November 2014 fell 15% year-on-year but improved 14% month-on-month, according to latest data of the National Fertilizer Development Centre (NFDC).

On a month-on-month basis, urea off-take increased to 467,000 tons.

On the other hand, diammonium phosphate (DAP) off-take registered a significant growth of 30% on a monthly basis while its sales dropped 6% year-on-year.



In the first 11 months of calendar year 2014, urea demand fell 5% to 4.976 million tons and DAP sales dipped 1% to 1.434 million tons compared to the same period of last year.

Moreover, average urea and DAP prices increased 0.3% and 2% to Rs1,894 per 50kg bag and Rs3,709 per 50kg bag respectively from last month’s average prices.

On October’s sales data, Sindh Abadgar Board President Abdul Majid Nizamani told The Express Tribune that urea sales declined in the province because of a delay of three to four weeks in sowing of Rabi crops.

He said the main reason for the delay in crop cultivation was late supply of water for Kharif crops and late harvesting of sugarcane crop during October. However, he hoped that things would get normal in December which would also improve urea sales.



On Punjab sales, he said unlike Sindh, everything had been normal as far as sowing and harvesting of sugarcane crop and urea sales were concerned.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 27^th,  2014.

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