Lucknow, 19 May: Uttar Pradesh Agriculture Minister Surya Pratap Shahi said that Prime Minister Narendra Modi today chaired a high-level meeting on the issue of fertilizer prices. He was given detailed presentation on the subject of fertilizer prices through a presentation. It was discussed in the meeting that due to the rising prices of phosphoric acid, ammonia etc. at the international level, prices of fertilizers are increasing.
He said that keeping in mind the interests of the farmers, the Prime Minister stressed that despite increasing the international prices, farmers should get fertilizer at the old rates.
The Agriculture Minister said that a historic decision was taken to increase the subsidy for DAP fertilizer from Rs 500 per bag to 140 per cent by Rs 1200 per bag. Thus, despite the increase in international market prices of DAP, it has been decided to sell it at the old price of Rs 1200 only, along with the central government has decided to bear all the additional burden of the price increase.
The Agriculture Minister said that the amount of subsidy per bag has never been increased at one time. Last year, the actual price of DAP was Rs 1,700 per bag. In which the central government was giving a subsidy of Rs 500 per bag. Therefore, the companies were selling fertilizer to farmers at Rs 1200 per bag.
Recently international prices of phosphoric acid, ammonia etc. used in DAP have gone up by 60 to 70 percent. For this reason, the actual cost of a DAP bag has now come to Rs. 2400, which is sold by the fertilizer companies at a subsidy of Rs. 500 for Rs. 1900. With this decision, farmers will continue to get DAP bags for Rs 1200 only.
The Agriculture Minister said that the Government of India (GoI) is always committed to the welfare of the farmers and will make all efforts to ensure that the farmers do not suffer the effects of price rise. The government spends around Rs 80,000 crore on subsidies on chemical fertilizers every year. Along with increasing the subsidy in DAP, the Government of India will spend an additional Rs 14,775 crore in the Kharif season.
This is the second major decision in the interest of farmers, after directly transferring an amount of Rs 20,667 crore to the farmers’ account under PM Kisan on the day of Akshaya Tritiya.
Shahi thanked Prime Minister Narendra Modi for this decision taken by the GoI in the interest of the farmers of the country.
