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Title: Need to revive the closed plants of HFCL, FCL and PPCL.
SHRI SUNIL KHAN (DURGAPUR):It is a matter of concern that to meet the deficit caused by inadequate domestic production, the Government has resorted to high volume of imports at high international prices. It was very much apprehended during 2002-03 that country would soon become import dependent when all the fertilizer producing plants of Hindustan Fertilizer Corpn. at Durgapur, Barauni and Haldia, Fertilizer Corp. of India Ltd at Sindri, Gorakhpur, Ramagundam and Talcher and Pyrites and Phosphates Chemicals Ltd. at Anihora and Saladispura were all closed down on the plea of higher production cost due to use of a costly feedstock. It is again reported that plants of Madurai Fertilizer Ltd. is also going to be closed on a similar reason. Last years about 2 million tonnes of urea was imported and during the current year the import of urea may touch an all time record level of 4.6 million tonne. The import of DAP may be close to 3 million tonnes and MDP nearly 4.0 million tonnes. It is reported that the farm gate cost of imported urea is about Rs. 13,000 per tonne as against the weighted average price of Rs. 10,500 per tonne for domestic urea. Timely decision to revive and restart all the closed plants and debottlenecking/expansion of existing capacities could have saved the situation to a great extent.
I urge upon the Union Government to revive and restart all the closed plants of HFCL, FCL and PPCL and give clearance to all pending proposals of
debottlenecking/expansion of existing plants.