Agriculture sector is facing shortage of urea fertilisers, which would affect the production of crops particularly rice, a major crop of agri sector. "Urea is a very important fertiliser for growth of crops and its shortage would have bad impact on production of all crops," Ghulam Ali a farmer from Sargodha told newsmen.
He said that some fertiliser dealers had also created artificial shortage in order to earn undue profit. Chaudhry Abid Ranjha, also a farmer from Kotmoman said that fertiliser dealers were delivering a urea bag after one week on depositing of National Identity Cards with them.
He said those dealers were also earning undue profit by selling a bag of urea by Rs 920 instead of government fixed rate of Rs 630. He urged the government to take measures to overcome this shortage to save the cultivation of Rabbi crops. Shipment of 150,000 tonnes of fertilisers would arrive in the country in September-October to overcome the shortfall of the commodity in the market, official in the Ministry of Food Agriculture and Livestock (Minfal) said.
"There was shortfall of about 150,000 tonnes of fertilisers for the Rabbi crop and the Minfal has finalised an agreement with the Saudi Government to import it," Qadir Bux Baloch, Agriculture Development Commissioner told newsmen. He said the shipment of urea would start arriving from September 3.