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Why fertilizer’ll disappear from market this year, by Ebonyi

Ebonyi State government yesterday offered explanation why fertilizer would disappear from the market, saying it would be costly this year. Commissioner for Commerce and Industry and General Manager Ebonyi State Fertilizer and Chemical Company Limited, Professor Ogbonnaya Chukwu, disclosed this to reporters in Abakaliki during an interview. Ebonyi State Fertilizer and Chemical Company Limited is supplying fertilizer to five states in the South-East and six South-South states of the federation.

However, Ogbonnaya noted that the federal government had withdrawn from providing raw materials to 32 participating states under its Presidential Fertilizer Initiative (PFI) following expiration of the three years it was expected to last. He said: “In May 2017, President Muhammadu Buhari went to Morocco and he signed a pact with JCB Morocco. I was in that team, our governor was at that time to do PFI which was for three years.

“Now, because of other factors, it was extended to 2020, additional one year was done and by this year, the federal government has lifted its hand no more PFI and that’s why I said that farmers should prepare for more costly price this year.

“There is no longer PFI the way we know it. Before, they bring up fertilizer raw materials although they are still going to provide the raw materials but we as Ebonyi Fertilizer Company will go down to Lagos and bring it with our own money and transport it down here.

“We go to Port-Harcourt to bring urea down with our own money. Anywhere we see limestone granus we buy it because they are not giving us limestone granus and they said now, go there, truck your own down, source your own limestone granus anywhere you can get it, produce and sell at any price that will give you profit. “This is why I said that this year, fertilizer will be costly and that is why as I speak, no blending plant is producing out of the 32 states participating because now, for us to get materials from federal government, we must do bank guarantee.

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