Dai ammonia phosphate (DAP) and urea offtake witnessed a decline of 77 percent and 3 percent, respectively, during the Kharif 2008 due to extremely high prices of DAP and shortage of urea in local market. Analysts said that low offtake of DAP could be attributed to the sky-high DAP price, and uncertainty regarding the amount of subsidy on DAP discouraged the farmer from DAP purchase.
During Kharif 2008 nutrient offtake (April-July) was 971,000 tons, which showed a decrease of 23.9 percent over the same period of Kharif 2007. Nitrogen offtake decreased by 11.7 percent to 885,000 tons, phosphate by 70.3 percent to 78,200 tons and potash about 7,750 tons with a decline of 20.2 percent. In produce terms, urea offtake stood at 1,780,000 tons, as compared to 1,843,000 tons of Kharif 2007, depicting a decreased of 3 percent during the Kharif 2008.
Similarly, DAP offtake showed a major decline of 76.7 percent during the Kharif 2008 with an offtake of 433,000 tons in Kharif 2007 to 101,000 tons in Kharif 2008. DAP offtake also depicted a decrease of 77.8 percent in July 2008 and overall 33,000 tons DAP offtake was registered during July 2008 against the 151,000 tons during 2007.
DAP offtake during July, 2008 was also lowest during last five years and before it never had seen any huge decline in a single month and it was 174,000 tons in July 2004, 166,000 tons in July 2005, 107,00 tons in July 2006, 151,000 tons in July 2007 and 33,000 tons in July this year. DAP offtake in the previous month was mainly for basal application of rice and maize, whereas urea was for top dressing on cotton and sugarcane.
The National Fertiliser Development Centre (NFDC) has shown concern over the declining offtake of phosphate fertiliser and said that decrease in overall DAP offtake was due to high international prices of DAP, which is further deteriorating the situation.
NFDC said that total nutrient offtake during July, 2008 was about 268,000 tons, which was 37.5 percent less than July 2007.
Among the nutrients, nitrogen offtake decreased by 30.5 percent, phosphate by 70.7 percent while offtake of potash increased by 18.5 percent. Urea offtake during July 2008 was 489,000 tons with a decrease of 26.7 percent from July 2007. The cumulative offtake in seven months (January-July) for urea and DAP fertilisers stood at 3,183,000 tons with an increase of 18 percent and 174,000 tons after a decline of 71 percent, respectively.