ISLAMABAD, Dec 18: The Ministry of Industries on Thursday directed all manufacturers to surrender half of their urea stocks to the government immediately to end the ongoing artificial shortages of the fertiliser.

The government will sell the urea stocks through the outlets of the Utility Stores Corporation (USC) and the National Fertiliser Corporation (NFC) at a subsidised rate of Rs660 per bag.

The official urea price has, however, been increased by Rs10 a bag.

Distributors across the country have illegally been selling a bag of urea as high as Rs950, which is an increase of around 50 per cent.

“We have directed the manufacturers to start providing urea from their stocks to the government from Friday,” Minister for Industries and Production Manzoor Ahmed Wattoo told a news conference here on Thursday after holding a meeting with all the urea stakeholders and related ministries.

Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif and officials from Sindh and NWFP had raised the issue, through the Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture, with the Ministry of Industries following severe criticism from the farmers who are sowing wheat and potato these days.

Federal Food and Agriculture Minister Nazar Mohammad Gondal who also spoke at the news conference said that the government would never surrender to the profiteers and hoarders mafia. He said the local manufacturers possessed 700,000 tons of urea of which 350,000 would be lifted by the government immediately and sold to farmers across the country at the discounted rate.

Both the ministers also admitted that urea was being sold by private dealers as high as Rs950 per bag instead of the initially officially fixed rate of Rs650.

There is a shortage of 600,000 tons of urea. Pakistan manufactures 4.8 million tons locally, while the total domestic need was 5.4 million tons. The 20 per cent deficit in the domestic production and consumption was being met through imports.

“There is no question that anyone should sell urea at increased prices from now onwards. We appeal to farmers not to pay extra for the fertiliser,” Mr Gondal announced.

In response to a question, the minister said that distributors had linked the urea sale with that to the DAP fertiliser which was being sold at over Rs3,000 a bag. “This has put extra burden on those farmers who don’t need to use DAP but were forced to either buy the DAP or not purchase urea at all”.

The agriculture minister said that all dealers had been directed to stop forcing people to buy also DAP if they wanted to purchase urea.

He said 190,000 tons of imported urea would arrive by December 31 and would ease the supplies problem. Another 387,000 tons would reach till January 15.

“The dealers should not assume that the government is taking a short term measure only. There will be no shortages of urea in the future as well,” Mr Gondal resolved.

The food minister said that hoarders and profiteers were making it hard for the government to achieve this year’s wheat production target of 25 million tons. But, such forces were being defeated with a “political will”.

“These industrialists will not be allowed to exploit the country’s farmers as they did in the past,” Mr Gondal declared.

Mr Wattoo said the government had spent Rs64 billion on the import of wheat this year.