Will not buy phosphoric acid above USD 600/ton: Fertiliser cos

With global suppliers charging hefty price for phosphoric acid, domestic fertiliser companies including IFFCO today said the country cannot "buckle under pressure" to buy the raw material at such high rates even as international firms threaten to stop supplies to India.
IFFCO said the international price of phosphoric acid, which is used in making of DAP and other complex fertilisers, should ideally be around USD 500 a tonne at a time when DAP rates have declined to USD 340-350 a tonne.
However, the global players are quoting as high as USD 715 a tonne for phosphoric acid and are not ready to sell below this price, it said.

It will be difficult to import phosphoric acid above USD 600 per tonne and no other Indian company can afford to import above this price, IFFCO said.
Alleging 'cartelisation' in global phosphoric acid market, Fertiliser Association of India (FAI) said this is being done to "dump" final product DAP in India and "cripple" the fertiliser industry here.
"One of the largest exporters has now announced to suspend shipment of phosphoric acid effective from July 1. This is clearly a cartelisation and adoption of unfair practice aimed to cripple the Indian industry," FAI said in a statement.

Unable to import the raw material at high prices has forced one of the local companies to announce closure of its plant with capacity of 1.2 million tonne DAP, it said.

Indian companies are unlikely to import the phosphoric acid above USD 600 per tonne as the domestic production becomes unviable, DG FAI Satish Chander said.
To restrict DAP and other complex fertiliser import, FAI demanded the government to raise import duty on these finished products.
Asserting that IFFCO "will not buckle under pressure", the fertiliser firm's Managing Director U S Awasthi said that the cooperative can not pass on the rise in raw material prices to the farmers. So our demand of reducing the import price of phosphoric acid was reasonable and justified.
India is one of the largest importer of Phosphoric Acid in the world with over 2 million tonne imported in 2015-16 out of which IFFCO share stands at 41 per cent or about 8.25 lakh tonnes.