Chairman, Federation of Pakistan Chambers of Commerce & Industry's (FPCCI) Regional Standing Committee, Ahmad Jawad, has said the fertilizer industry is the backbone of the agriculture sector and government should allow export of surplus urea to facilitate country's exports.
He said: "our urea plants are running at full capacity and they annually produced 6 million tons and consumption of the industry is 5.4 million tons, hence we have surplus urea of 0.6 million tons every year". If we carry forward the last year stock the country could easily export 1.2 million tons which may fetch $220 million dollars. Internationally per ton price of urea varies from $190 to 220 which is an appropriate rate for the local manufactures.
Jawad said: "currently there is a ban on export of urea; however in Musharaf era the proposal floated by the private sector regarding urea export was discussed in detail at an inter-ministerial meeting chaired by the then Minister for Industries and Production, Jahangir Khan Tareen, but the deliberations deadlocked when fertilizer sector declined to give any guarantee regarding prices."