Fertilizer offtake decreases significantly by 25% during December

January 25, 2021 (MLN): The overall nutrient offtake during the month of December 2020 was about 597 thousand tonnes, which represents a significant decrease of 25.1 percent over December 2019.

According to the monthly data released by National Fertilizer Development Center (NFDC), Nitrogen offtake decreased considerably by 29.7 percent while phosphate offtake increased by 3.8 percent. Potash offtake decreased by 18.9 percent over December, 2019.

In product terms, urea offtake was 881 thousand tonnes which decreased by 34.5 percent, while DAP offtake was 205 thousand tonnes representing an increase of 6.2 percent over December 2019. Actually, the highest ever offtake of urea (1345 thousand tonnes) was recorded during December 2019 after continuous decline in preceding months.

Total fertilizer nutrient offtake during Rabi 2020-21 (Oct-Dec) was about 1520 thousand tonnes, which decreased by 1.4 percent compared with same timeframe of last Rabi. In product terms, urea offtake was 1827 thousand tonnes which decreased by 1.1 percent while DAP offtake was 791 thousand tonnes which decreased by 8.9 percent over same period of last season. The reason for low offtake during current Rabi 2020-21 is the unexpected high offtake of DAP during the month of August (180 percent) and September (9 percent) in Kharif 2020.

During the month, the prices of urea (sona) and urea (other) increased by 1.2 and 1.1 percent, as compared to November 2020. The price of other fertilizers such as DAP, SSP (G) and NPK increased by 1.0, 0.7 and 0.5 percent respectively while prices of NP, CAN and SOP decreased slightly by 0.3, 0.1 and 0.2 percent respectively.

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