Govt celebrates rice day as farmers forage for fertilizer

KATHMANDU, June 29: The government on Friday celebrated National Rice Day, which marks the onset of cultivation of paddy -- one of the major crops that weighs the most in country´s agricultural gross domestic product (AGDP).

The day carried special meaning for officials because the country in this fiscal year enjoyed record output of paddy, posting surplus of well over 800,000 tons. [break]Though experts have raised question over whether the government really owns its credit, officials believe they are the ones who made such an outcome possible.

Furthermore, after banning export since 2008, the government this year has also taken steps to open rice exports. While this is expected to enable farmers reap benefits of bumper harvest, addressing their current complaint of squeezed pricing, the country will witness growth in exports figure.

However, the monsoon, on which majority of farmers rely on to irrigate their land and win out good harvest, has been delayed by more than a week. This has already hurt this season´s output; and still worse, affected timely plantation and threatened to hit next season´s output.

Secondly, the much-needed di-ammonium phosphate (DAP) - which farmers apply prior to planting the paddy to maintain yield -- has gone severely scarce.

The scarcity has hit farmers mainly as the government shelved for months turned a deaf ear to the request of Agriculture Inputs Company (AIC) to issue instructions for procurement of 30,000 tons of DAP that the Indian government promised to supply at subsidized rate.

AIC had placed this request to Ministry of Agriculture around three months ago. However, the government responded to the letter only on Thursday. The government has said that AIC does not require the government´s permission to procure fertilizer.

“This was nothing but passing the buck to us. If the government had responded on time, there would have been no fertilizer crisis,” said a senior AIC official.

Moreover, AIC officials themselves are reluctant to move the process for procurement of DAP ahead mainly as the case of Indian Potash Limited supplying less quantity of fertilizer is being investigated by the Commission for the Investigation of Abuse of Authority. “We don´t have the authority to override instructions from the public accounts committee of then parliament,” said the source.