India's fertiliser subsidy bill for the current fiscal year could exceed ₹3 lakh crore if global supply disruptions continue, nearly double the ₹1.71 lakh crore originally budgeted, Krishna Kant Pathak, joint secretary in the Department of Fertilisers, said at a briefing, Global Agriculture reports.
Pathak linked the rise to sustained disruption of global fertiliser supply chains tied to instability in West Asia. Aparna S Sharma, additional secretary in the same department, said the cost of urea and other fertilisers has been on a clear upward trend, though officials did not commit to a final figure because so much depends on world markets in the rest of the year.
The subsidy covers urea, di-ammonium phosphate (DAP), NPK complexes and single super phosphate (SSP), which farmers buy at controlled retail prices well below the import or production cost. The government pays the difference, so when world prices of urea, DAP or raw materials such as phosphoric acid and sulphur rise, the cost falls on the budget rather than on farmers.
India imports a large share of its phosphatic and potassic fertiliser and part of its urea through long-term supply agreements, so a sustained rise in world prices feeds almost directly into higher landed costs for the state-backed import and distribution system.
Officials also gave an earlier, less stressed baseline of around ₹2 lakh crore for comparison, showing that the bill was already running well above plan before the latest price pressure. An outturn above ₹3 lakh crore would be one of the larger subsidy overruns of recent years.
Source: Global Agriculture
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