NEW DELHI: The government on Wednesday called out major foreign fertiliser companies for making a killing by artificially hiking the international fertiliser prices during the Russia-Ukraine war taking advantage of the disruptions in supply chain. Without taking any name, Union fertiliser minister Mansukh Mandaviya said India will not tolerate cartelisation where a few countries or companies set the prices of the soil nutrients.
Speaking at an event organised by the Fertiliser Association of India (FAI) attended by several foreign players, Mandaviya said, “The international prices of fertiliser went up in the past one year. I studied and found that a few players were setting the prices. Any country or company setting the price is not fair. The price should be set by the market. But this did not happen. You may get short-term profit. But by doing so you give us an opportunity to find long-term solutions to go for alternate fertilisers.” India is the largest importer of fertilisers.
Mandaviya said in the times to come India would choose “fair and frank partners”, rather than “tolerating cartelisation” while urging them to have “reasonable and transparent mechanisms” and take long-term views in dealing with issues of fertilisers in the larger interest of global food security. He said what the foreign companies did during the Ukraine war was “not good”.
The minister also urged the global suppliers to understand the dynamics of a large market like India and give it preferential treatment. “India will not tolerate a situation where we are increasing our subsidy and the international players keep increasing the prices. Why should the market not set the price?” he asked while highlighting the thrust of the government to go for alternate fertilisers, including Nano urea and Nano DAP. Mandaviya said the government doesn’t want farmers to depend on one fertiliser.
Citing how the spike in international prices of fertilisers and their inputs has increased the subsidy burden on the central government, Mandaviya said the amount of fertiliser subsidy has increased by 270% in the past four years — from $10 billion for the pre-pandemic year 2019-20 to almost $27 billion in the current year.
While drawing a parallel to how New Delhi responded to the global health crisis due to Covid-19, Mandaviya said the government supplied necessary medicines and “neither raised prices nor compromised the quality”. He said, “We could have sought any price for the medicines. We used to get regular calls from other countries for medicines to supply azithromycin as they didn’t have them. We gave medicines to 150, but did not increase prices. It was a global crisis and we helped the world."