Pakistan: Minister Khusro Bakhtyar accuses Sindh govt of non-cooperation in controlling illegal movement of urea trucks

Pakistan Federal Minister Khusro Bakhtyar on Friday accused the Pakistan People Party government in Sindh of not sharing the data to help trace the movement of urea trucks from the province to Afghanistan.

Khusro Bakhtyar, the Federal Minister of Energy said in a press conference on Friday that urea movement was being traced using a portal developed by the Ministry of Industries and Production, according to Dawn.

"This portal also includes provinces and fertilizer manufacturers. Punjab is checking up to 88 per cent movement of urea but there is no significant response from Sindh," he said.

"Smuggling was a lucrative business in the recent past as there was around five times price differential between the locally produced urea and the imported urea," he added.

The fertilizer manufacturers who also attended the press conference also highlighted that the current urea rates in Pakistan were the same as they were in 2012 and further the manufacturers asked the dealers as well as the farmers to avoid panic buying and purchase urea only according to their requirements, according to Dawn.

Further, the fertilizer manufacturers also said that they have transferred around Rs 400 billion profits to the farmers and also announced that complaints can be lodged at the helpline of that relevant company whose dealer was overcharging or allegedly creating artificial urea shortage. The supplies will be smooth in February too.

The industry players said that by adding the impact of subsidized gas, the total benefit is given to the farmers amounted to Rs 790 per 20 kg urea bag, whereas in terms of price parity with the international markets the farmers were getting an advantage of around Rs 9,000 per bag, Dawn reported.

( With inputs from ANI )

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