AS parts of palliative measures on covid-19 pandemic, the federal government has reduced the price of fertiliser by 20 percent per bag.
The Chairman Presidential Fertiliser Initiative (PFI) and the Jigawa State Governor, Alhaji Muhammadu Badaru Abubakar at a briefing in Dutse, the Jigawa State capital, said: “As part of the palliative measures introduced by Mr. President to provide relief to farmers on account of Covid-19 pandemic the market price for the sales of PFI NPK 20.10.10 fertiliser to farmers and other end-users has reduced from N5,500 to N5000 per 50kg bag.”
Abubakar explained that the new price is with immediate effect and so far there is over 1.4 million 50kg NPK 20.10.10 bags is presently available in the market on a new price of N5,000 far bag.
PFI noted: “Based on forgoing, we reassure Nigerians that all necessary preparations for the successful implementation of Mr. President’s PFI are very much underway, and sufficient volumes of fertiliser will be made available in time to meet the need of the Nigerian farmers for the wet season farming, despite the covid-19 pandemic which we are hopeful will come to an end soon.
“As of today, the PFI has already imported enough of the two important raw materials, Phosphate and Potash to produce eight million 50kg bags of NPK fertiliser, while the two materials source locally that is Urea and Fillers are delivered on an ongoing basis to the blending plants.”
He stated further that preparation for the 2020 PFI programme is, therefore, well underway with production having commenced across a number of the 29 participating blending plants across 15 states, ” a total of 1.4 million bags of NPK fertiliser had been released to agro-dealers and other fertiliser distributors has so far been issued”.
” Orders are being concluded for one additional vessel each of Phosphate and Potash in order to kick off the 2020 other blends program to ensure that Nigerian farmers have the full complement of fertiliser blends available to them for this year’s wet season”, governor emphasis.
He said between 2016 and 2019 the PFI delivered about 19 million 50kg bags of NPK 20.10.10 fertiliser from 22 blending plants across 13 state.
The PFI chair added that resuscitation of fertiliser blending industry has dropped the prices of the commodity by 50 percent and resulted in substantial foreign exchange savings for the country.
signaturetv.org/nation/IJM