Chinhphu.vn – Deputy Prime Minister Hoang Trung Hai asks the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development to take the prime responsibility, review the demand as well as the domestic fertilizer production capacity and promptly forecast the domestic and world fertilizer markets in order to provide instructions and solutions on balancing demand and supply of fertilizer in the 2012-2013 Winter-Spring crop and the whole year of 2013.
The Ministry of Industry and Trade instructs the plants to keep up progress of Urea and DAP production, ensuring sufficient fertilizer for agricultural production in 2013; having appropriate mechanism for management of Urea import and export on the basis of balancing supply and demand in the country.
The Deputy Prime Minister also asked the State Bank of Vietnam to work with Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development to identify the demand for foreign currency and develop the supply plan accordingly to ensure fertilizer imports, especially Potassium, in support of agricultural production.
Vietnam Fertilizer Association proactively co-operates with the functional agencies in detection and dealing with production, sales of counterfeit and low quality fertilizer; understands the market situation and proposes solutions to ensure balance between fertilizer supply and demand in 2013.
The Deputy Prime Minister also asks Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development to instruct the localities to provide farmers with guidance on reasonable usage of fertilizers; encouraging them to use synthetic fertilizer such as NPK, microbial organic fertilizer and biomechanical organic fertilizer.
According to the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, the chemical fertilizer demand for Vietnam”s agricultural production in 2013 is about 10.3 million tons, including 2.2 million tons of Urea, 850 thousand tones of SA, 950 thousand tons of Potassium, 900 thousand tons of DAP, 3.8 million tons of NPK and 1.8 million tons of Phosphate.
However, at present, domestic fertilizer producers just meet 77.6 % of total demand and Vietnam still has to import 2.47 million tons of fertilizer of many kinds. For some fertilizers such as Urea, NPK and Phosphate from 2013 onwards, domestic production will satisfy the total demand.
According to the website of the Planning Department, Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, our country needs about 950 thousand tons of Potassium fertilizer for agricultural production in 2013. Currently, Vietnam cannot produce Potassium fertilizer domestically due to shortage of raw material (Potassium mines); as a result, 100% must be imported.
Hence, in the coming time, a proactive import plan is needed to ensure enough Potassium fertilizer for production demand of Winter – Spring crop 2012 – 2013 with high quality and at reasonable price.