Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Saturday announced the setting up of a new urea plant with an annual production capacity of 12.7 lakh tonnes (lt) at Namrup in Assam.
If this proposal in the latest Union Budget fructifies into investment, it would be the eighth new urea plant to come up in India since 2019.
Advertisement
Six of these — with similar 12.7 lt capacity at Gapepan (Rajasthan), Ramagundam (Telangana), Panagarh (West Bengal), Gorakhpur (Uttar Pradesh), Barauni (Bihar) and Sindri (Jharkhand) — were commissioned between January 2019 and November 2022. The seventh 12.7 lt unit, at Talcher (Odisha), is about 65% completed. The total investment in the seven plants works out to over Rs 61,500 crore.
All the new plants, including the one proposed, are located in the “new Green Revolution” states of eastern India, Telangana and Rajasthan. Barring Talcher (which uses coal as feedstock), they all run on natural gas, mostly imported.
With seven terminals for handling imported liquified natural gas — at Mundra, Dahej and Hazira (Gujarat), Kochi (Kerala), Ennore (Tamil Nadu) and Dhamra (Odisha) — and pipelines crisscrossing the country, it has become increasingly viable to import and transport gas, instead of urea, to the hinterland. Import of finished urea would make greater sense for feeding the western and southern markets closer to the ports, said officials.
The government has targeted near-atmanirbhartha (self-reliance) in urea, which is India’s most widely consumed fertiliser. Between 2011-12 and 2023-24 (April-March), India’s domestic urea production rose from 22 million to 31.4 million tonnes (mt), even with imports falling from 7.8 mt to 7 mt and after peaking at over 9.8 mt in 2020-21. The current fiscal (April-December) has recorded a further 28.9% drop in imports to 4.3 mt from 6.1 mt in the same period of 2023-24.
The government has targeted near-atmanirbhartha (self-reliance) in urea, which is India’s most widely consumed fertiliser. 
Share
