KARACHI, Aug 30: The country is likely to lose 100,000 tons in rice production and three million bales of cotton due to acute shortage of urea which has adversely affected the two crops which are currently in the flowering stage.

President Sindh Abaadgar Board Majeed Nizamani talking to Dawn from Hyderabad on Friday said that there was no real urea shortage as the total consumption stood at 5.4 million tons against a production of 4.8 million tons.

The government had already imported 300,000 tons of urea, while according to adviser on agriculture and industries Mian Manzoor Wattoo the import of another 300,000 tons was in the pipeline.

Mr Nizamani said since urea was not being consumed in Sindh and Balochistan in the beginning of the season for two months because there was no water and crops were not sown, hence there was no question of shortage.

He said the urea prices in the province had surged from Rs625 to Rs1,100 per 50-kg bag on Friday as the shortage had reached such an extent that it was difficult to get even a single bag on any price.

The shortage has also resulted in protest and riots by the growers in front of the government offices.

Mr Nizamani said that the agriculture adviser had admitted in his statement on August 9 that some hidden hands were behind the urea shortage. “This implies that the government is well aware of such vested interest, but it seems completely helpless to take them to task because they have a strong lobby in the government,” he added.

He said that it was an open secret that large quantities of urea were smuggled from Quetta to Afghanistan despite the fact there was no urea factory in Balochistan and many traders from Punjab and Sindh bought the commodity from Quetta.

He said that despite GST waiver and huge subsidy of Rs11 billion given to the urea factories by the government to compensate them against hike in gas rates, the growers were forced to pay double of the official price for the commodity.

He said that there was no shortage of urea during the last season and only higher prices of DAP which reached Rs2,800 per bag affected crops output which if translated in monetary terms will come of Rs18 billion. The lesser use of DAP resulted in drop of 0.6 million tons in rice production, 3.5 million tons in wheat and two million bales in cotton last season.