Committed to fertiliser securities of farmers: Ananth Kumar

The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA) today approved the continuation of production of urea from Madras Fertilizers Ltd -Manali, Mangalore Chemicals and Fertilisers Limited-Mangalore and Southern Petrochemicals Industries Corporation -Tuticorin using naphtha as feedstock till availability of gas through gas pipeline or by any other means.According to the Fertiliser Minister Ananth Kumar the process of using naptha will continue till natural gas is made available through pipelines or other means. Speaking to CNBC-TV18, he said: "The Honourable Prime Minister led Union Cabinet took a decision to continue with the subsidy regime for these three plants which are running on naphtha till they get gas supply."Speaking on linking the subsidies with direct benefit transfer (DBT), he said the government has appointed a task force to work on DBT and the report was awaited.Below is the transcrispt of his interviewQ: Taking cue from that, you said till they get gas supply, are we working with some sort of a deadline, maybe a two year, three year programme that we are working with in terms of providing gas to them and what is the kind of timeline that we are looking at in terms of the three pipelines that you described to us? We believe they are still at the detailed project report (DPR) stage. How many more months or years to go before we can actually realise the supply of gas.A: Actually, then UPI government, Congress government at the centre took a decision to convert these three plants to gas based plants in 2007. They took seven years time thinking about it and doing nothing. Therefore, only after our government came in, in May 2014, I convened many meetings between the Chief Ministers of respective states and the Ministry of Fertilisers to sort out these issues. After a lot of persuasion, a lot of homework, we are in a stage of initiating the entire pipeline and it will definitely take two to two and a half years to complete and commission. Q: Talking about the subsidy angle of this, what is the additional burden that the government is looking at on account of extending the naptha subsidies?A: It will be Rs 890 crore per year, additional subsidy. Totally, Rs 4,500 crore of subsidy, but Modi government has taken a decision that we are committed to the farmers’ welfare and fertiliser security. Therefore we are ready to forego this additionality.Q: A slightly associated issue with respect to linking the subsidies with direct benefit transfer (DBT) - that was something that the government was working on. If you could just give us a status update of sorts as to where things stand right now? Has the report been submitted, if at all, what are the recommendations?A: We have already installed fertiliser monitoring system (FMS). Now we are capable of monitoring from production to the dealer, dealer to the retailer and retailer to the farmer as well. But the farmers who are holding the farmlands in the country, all of them do not do the cultivation. Therefore 50 percent of the land owners do the cultivation. Other 50 percent people do not own the land. There are such issues, therefore we have appointed a task force to work on the DBT and I am awaiting its report.