Why this fertiliser crisis at all?

The increase in international prices and enhancement of freight charges have added to the domestic market price, according to the Bangladesh Fertiliser Association (BFA). This is understandable. But how can the high premium paid through the wrangling by the government and the BFA over fertiliser pricing and subsidy disbursement be explained away, or more relevantly, condoned?

Here is a glaring instance of insensitivity to the pressing needs of the farmers ironically where an agricultural subsidy worth Tk 271 crore was announced four months ago and yet it remains unutilised to this day. The government insists that importers release fertilisers at a rate $15 higher a tonne than the import-price which then it proposes to cushion off by giving 25 percent subsidy to the importers. The importers' point of view is that they have five to six-month-old stocks which carried bank loan interests and godown and other establishment charges that need to be computed, even though the import prices were lower. At the same time, they will now receive the new consignments at current higher prices. So, they regard the government's suggestion of a flat rate as 'arbitrary'. That's why the BFA wanted the government 'to take the price that they are now paying to import fertiliser as the bench mark'.

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A tussle is seemingly on between the government and the BFA to strike a deal based on how little each side ends up paying in terms of subsidy and sacrifice on profits respectively. But it's the farmers who are at the suffering end, a predicament which must be ended by ironing out the differences at the soonest.