The New Nation - Internet Edition

Syful Islam

Poor farmers are not getting the benefit of government subsidy on fertiliser as major portion of the same are being misused by the dealers and powerful syndicates, informed sources said.

The government gives 15 per cent subsidy on imported fertiliser while it supply 40 kilogram of locally produced or imported urea fertiliser at Tk 580 to the farmers through dealers. For each bag of fertiliser dealers get Tk 30 as commission.

However, instead of selling those fertilisers among the farmers the dishonest dealers sell those at three to six times higher price in the local market.

Sources said dyeing factories use urea fertiliser instead of liquid nitrogen gas as raw materials. For dyeing purpose they need liquid nitrogen. Urea fertiliser contains 46 per cent nitrogen. Instead of importing liquid nitrogen the dyeing factory owners buy urea fertiliser from the dealers at higher price and use those.

On Monday last law enforcing agencies recovered 220 sacks of urea fertiliser from a textile mill in Rupgonj under Narayangonj district and arrest two persons in this connection. The factory uses 11 tonnes of urea fertiliser each month and during the last 2.5 years it used nearly 2 lakh sacks of fertiliser.

Sources said, for each bag of urea fertiliser the government gives subsidy amounting Tk 3,000. The factory has caused loss of Tk 600 crore to the government during the last 2.5 years.

As the dealers sell fertiliser to the industrial units the farmers face acute shortage of the very important element for cultivate their lands. They do not get fertiliser even though they want to pay higher price. Demonstrations by the farmers demanding fertiliser become common phenomena in the recent days.

A meeting of the subsidy and price fixing committee on fertiliser has recently observed that farmers are facing huge shortage of phosphate and MOP fertiliser in the district level. To this connection it has approved release of hundreds of tones of privately imported fertiliser under government subsidy, which were previously decided to release without subsidy.