COVID-19: Nigerian govt slashes fertilizer price by 10%

The Nigerian government has cut the price of fertiliser by 20% as part of measures deployed to curb the impact of COVID-19 on agricultural production.

Jigawa State Governor and Chairman Presidential Fertiliser Initiative (PFI), Muhammadu Badaru Abubakar, at a briefing in Dutse on Wednesday said “as part of the palliative measures introduced by Mr. President to provide relief to farmers on account of Covid-19 pandemic the market price for the sales of PFI NPK 20.10.10 fertiliser to farmers and other end-users has reduced from N5,500 to N5000 per 50kg bag.”

He stated that the new price would take immediate effect, adding that more than 1.4 million 50kg NPF 20.10.10 bags were currently available in the market at the new price.

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“Based on forgoing, we reassure Nigerians that all necessary preparations for the successful implementation of Mr. President’s PFI are very much underway, and sufficient volumes of fertiliser will be made available in time to meet the need of the Nigerian farmers for the wet season farming, despite the covid-19 pandemic which we are hopeful will come to an end soon.

“As of today, the PFI has already imported enough of the two important raw materials, Phosphate and Potash to produce eight million 50kg bags of NPK fertiliser, while the two materials sourced locally that is Urea and Fillers are delivered on an ongoing basis to the blending plants,” Abubakar said.

He observed that production had started in 29 participating blending plants in 15 states while a total of 1.4 million bags of NPK fertiliser had been distributed to agro dealers and other fertiliser distributors.

The Jigawa State governor said “orders are being concluded for one additional vessel each of Phosphate and Potash in order to kick off the 2020 other blends program to ensure that Nigerian farmers have the full complement of fertiliser blends available to them for this year’s wet season.”

He confirmed that the revival of the fertiliser blending industry had helped cut the price of the product by 50% and helped Nigeria save considerable foreign exchanged.

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