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KOLKATA, Oct. 21

THE Centre would shortly fine-tune the pricing policy for urea, aimed at "greater transparency and uniformity in subsidy disbursement to the urea units."

Mr Tapan Sikdar, Union Minister of State for Chemicals and Fertilisers, told this to newspersons here on Monday. Mr Sikdar admitted that the existing urea pricing policy had certain anomalies. "The Centre now proposes to correct them including the methods of calculating the subsidy for urea," the Minister added.

He said the Centre would stress more on use of bio-fertilisers than chemical fertilisers in the proposed new fertiliser policy. He informed that the proposed fertiliser policy was expected to be announced before the presentation of the next Budget.

The Minister said that the Government has also decided to encourage use of bio-pesticides instead of chemical ones. These moves have been contemplated not only on account of environmental concerns but also for increasing the farm sector's productivity. The Government is considering promoting a pesticide prepared from neem.

The Centre would make investments for increasing infrastructure for increasing production of bio-fertilisers, he indicated. Currently, six units of the public sector Hindustan Fertiliser Corporation (HFC) produce around 500 tonnes of bio-fertilisers.

He further said that his Ministry has sought postponement of closure of the Durgapur and Sindhri units of HFC and experiment using methane gas available in the Ranigunge coal mines area.

"A proposal for utilising methane as the fuel through a network of pipelines connecting the Durgapur and Sindhri units has also been made. However, the proposal is dependent on the techno-economic viability of the project. A private operator has moved in to commercially tap the coal-bed methane gas in the Ranigunge area," the Minister informed.

The Fertiliser Ministry has also initiated a dialogue with Indian Oil Corporation (IOC) for the latter's possible use of facilities of HFC's Haldia unit. "Since IOC is setting up a hydrogen project in Haldia, it might be interested in utilising some of the facilities of the ailing Haldia fertiliser unit," Mr Sikdar said.

He expected that within a couple of months, IOC and the Ministry would be arriving at a decision whether a joint venture outfit could be formed for utilisation of the Haldia unit. It may be mentioned here that HFC's Haldia unit was already supplying water on a commercial basis to IOC, and has hired out the ammonia storage facility to Hindustan Lever Ltd.

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