Urea price shoots up

Urea price has reached a new peak Rs 975 per 50-kg in Sindh and Punjab due to hoarding and smuggling, market sources told Business Recorder on Tuesday. The price of urea has been continuously rising since the last one month, but in the last two days it has gone up Rs 125 per 50-kg bag in the domestic market.
"If the government does not take the action against the manipulators, market movers then there is every likelihood that its price will move up to Rs 1,000 per 50-kg bag in the domestic market," sources said. Urea stocks are believed to be insufficient to meet the rising demand in the Kharif season, they said. "Pakistan is facing urea shortage by over 10,000 tones during the current Kharif season, which could badly hit cotton, rice, vegetable and other crops production," they added.
They said despite urea shortage in domestic market it is being smuggled to the Afghanistan, where it fetches a price of Rs 1400 per bag. In addition, market movers have also started hoarding urea, taking advantage of sluggish supply. A farmer is given only one urea bag on production of CNIC photocopy.
The sources said that Kharif crop sowing across the country has been completed, which has led to increase in demand for the urea for the final stage of production. The government had fixed a rate of Rs 625 per 50-kg urea bag. However, now when the demand is rising the market players have become active to achieve ill-gotten money, market sources said.
During the last two days urea has been available at Rs 975 per bag. It was being sold at Rs 850 per bag on Saturday, they added. They said that urea price gone up especially in Rahim Yar Khan, Rajanpur, Vehari, Multan, Muzaffargarh, Bahawalpur and interior Sindh.
They said that this is a very serious issue and the government is not giving its serious attention to growers' problems. "Although a ship carrying over 22,000 tonnes of urea is expected to reach on Wednesday at Karachi, its distribution across the country would take more than 20 days, pushing its demand further. Urea is an important source of the Kharif crops and last year its consumption was around 2.537 million tonnes.