ISLAMABAD: The Economic Coordination Committee (ECC) of the Cabinet on Tuesday sanctioned Rs250 million in additional funds for the Intelligence Bureau and approved a mechanism for basket price for imported and local urea that would make costlier the key agricultural ingredient by Rs160-170 per bag.

The meeting of the ECC presided over by Caretaker Finance Minister Dr Shamshad Akhtar also approved about Rs3.67 billion in grants for the Federal Directorate of Immunisation and Pakistan Hockey Federation (PHF). “The ECC approved the mechanism for weighted average price with the direction to National Fertiliser Marketing Ltd (NFML) for ensuring reasonable price for urea and Ministry of Industries & Production to provide oversight to the whole process”, said an official statement.

The Ministry of Industries, NFML and local urea manufacturers would now work out the final sale price based on the mix of local production and imported fertiliser including other expenses. Therefore, the minimum retail price (MRP) that currently ranges between Rs3,600 to Rs3,980 per 50kg bag would go up by Rs160 to Rs170 to Rs3,770 to Rs4,100 per bag.

A senior industries ministry official told Dawn that the meeting appreciated the ‘reasonable price’ secured from Azerbaijan’s Socar Trading for 220,000 tonnes of urea on a G2G basis. He said the meeting was told that previous ECC and cabinet meetings had decided on multiple occasions over the past two months that the subsidy on imported urea would be borne by the provinces.

Growers to pay Rs170 more for 50-kg urea bag

The Trading Corporation of Pakistan (TCP) reported the total subsidy cost at about Rs27.5bn and the landed cost of imported urea at about Rs6,250 per bag of 50kg. On top of this would be incidental charges of about Rs4.9bn, according to NFML, thus taking the total subsidy requirement to Rs30.4bn.

However, the Punjab government has contended that it would bear only 50pc cost while Sindh agreed to pay the full cost of subsidy for 53,000 tonnes of urea (24pc of 220,000 tonnes) but Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa did not respond.

The ECC also approved a request of the Intelligence Bureau for the provision of Rs250m in additional funds during 2023-24. The bureau briefed the committee about the recent surge in terrorism activities which needed effective countermeasures to thwart nefarious designs of terrorists.

The ECC also approved a request of the Ministry of Inter-Provincial Coordination for the release of Rs100m for the participation of the national hockey team in international events and other sports promotion activities. This grant, ECC was told would also be utilised for Davis Cup (Tennis) with India and other mind games like Scrabble and Chess.

Published in Dawn, January 10th, 2024