Govt To Sell Subsidised Fertilizers Under The Brand Name 'Bharat' From October

The government will sell all subsidised fertilizers like urea and DAP under a single brand name 'Bharat' from October. The government is going to do this to make fertilizers available to the farmers on time and to reduce the cost of freight subsidy. The government had announced this two days back while launching the 'One Nation One Fertilizer' initiative under the Prime Minister's Indian Public Fertilizer Project (PMBJP).

The central government has decided to start the PMBJP scheme on 2nd October i.e. Gandhi Jayanti, so that the country can be made self-sufficient in fertilizers. It is known that the sowing of Rabi season starts from October and the procurement of fertilizers also starts from the first week.

Even though this arrangement will start from October, fertilizer companies have been given time till the end of December to sell their existing stock. The government had given fertilizer subsidy of Rs 1.62 lakh crore in the last financial year (2021-22). The burden of fertilizer subsidy on the government is expected to increase to Rs 2.25 lakh crore in the current financial year due to increase in the prices of fertilizers globally in the last five-months.

Explaining the reason behind the sale of all subsidised fertilizers under the Bharat brand, Union Minister Mansukh Mandaviya said, the government gives a subsidy of 80 percent of the retail price of urea. Similarly, the government gives 65 percent of the price of DAP, 55 percent of the price of NPK and 31 percent of the price of potash as subsidy.

Giving information, the Union Minister said that at present, companies sell these fertilizers under different names, but sending them from one state to another not only increases the transportation cost but also creates problems in making them available to the farmers on time. As a solution to this issue, government has come up with branding better fertilizers.