KARACHI: The government may suffer loss worth millions of rupees owing to wrong planning and defective shipping schedule as presently four vessels, carrying around 202,500 tons of urea, are waiting at the outer anchorage of the Gwadar port for the last six to 10 days.

The successive arrival of ships at the Gwadar Port has not only caused congestion, but also resulted in long waiting period for vessels at the off-port to get their turn for berths where only three ships can be accommodated at a time, shipping sources said.

Sources said around 722,000 tons of urea had been tendered for import by the Trading Corporation of Pakistan (TCP) to meet the Rabi wheat crop demand.

Around 456,000 tons of urea has already arrived and unloaded at the Gwadar port and a balance of 266,000 tons is due. All the 18 vessels, which had been chartered for haulage of urea to meet the pressing demand of growers, have been asked to call at Gwadar port.

The country is faced with around one million tons of urea shortage and there was an urgent need for import of urea. The government could have diverted some of the vessels to Karachi and Qasim ports to avert the current situation, sources said, adding presently both Karachi and Qasim ports after an embargo on Nato/Isaf containers movement across the Pakistan-Afghan border are having a lot of idle berthing capacity and could have easily accommodated urea loaded vessels.

Shipping sources disclosed that mv Aggeious with 54,000 tons of urea arrived on Dec 17, mv Vesco Sky with 46,500 tons is waiting since Dec 19, and Chungo Tres with 49,000 tons arrived on Dec 27 while mv Rapid with 53,000 tons reached on Dec 29.

Presently three ships are unloading urea at the Gwadar port with one vessel mv Lycavtios after unloading 51,996 tons of urea.

The vessel is expected to sail out on Thursday.

Official sources disclosed that the TCP initially booked 260,000 tons of urea from world market at $538 per ton, but subsequently on purchasing 440,000, the corporation paid $540.75 per ton. However, urea price in the world market has now dropped to $530 per ton.

Sources said that on average around 4000 to 5000 tons of urea is being unloaded per day at Gwadar, thereby resulting in long delays in clearance of ships.

As a result of this, vessels waiting outside the port have to wait for six to 10 days for being allotted berths at the port.

Shipping circles suggested that the government should divert ships to Karachi and Qasim port because presently both the ports are working under capacity and could save the country from suffering millions of rupees in demurrage and transportation cost.They further said that around 250,000 tons of urea had already left Gwadar port, of which 75,000 tons is still lying in warehouses at Karachi. Since there is no direct connectivity to the upcountry from Gwadar, entire quantity of imported urea would first come to Karachi through coastal highway and then again loaded on trucks to the upcountry.

It is not only the shipping schedule which is incurring extra cost to the national exchequer, but transportation and distribution of urea in a speedy manner is also a big issue.

Though the country has urea production capacity of 70 million tons, it is not being utilised even to the extent of meeting the domestic demand of around 22 million tons per annum due to gas shortage.

This is due to defective government policy which fails to make necessary adjustments in gas tariff to meet urea demand from local sources, Asif Aziz Balagamwala, member KCCI managing committee said.

He said if the government only raises gas tariff for fertiliser industry to the level of general industry, it would save millions of rupees by curtailing urea imports which is much costlier.

Mr Balagamwala explained that by jacking up gas tariff for fertiliser industry, it would only push urea price by Rs300 per 50kg bag, but on importing, it costs around Rs1500 more per 50kg bag for which the government has to give higher subsidy to growers.The government supplies urea to National Marketing Fertiliser Ltd (NMFL) at Rs10,760 per ton which sells at a control price of Rs1,300 per 50kg bag.

However, middlemen and boarders have completely took control of the urea market and pushed its price in the range of Rs1,600 to Rs2,000 per 50kg bag, market sources said.