Govt making all efforts to enhance ease of doing business in fertilizer sector: Gowda

New Delhi: Union Minister for Chemicals and Fertilizers DV Sadananda Gowda has said that the government is making all efforts to enhance ease of doing business in the fertilizer sector so that it can be made Aatmanirbhar in the true sense and the farmer community can be served better. Elaborating on the various initiatives taken by the government in this direction, Gowda said that the Department of Fertilizers has rolled out a more farmer-friendly DBT 2.0 version in July 2019 to improvise the existing DBT system and make it more user-friendly. DBT 2.0 has three components namely, DBT Dashboard, PoS 3.0 Software and Desktop PoS (point of sale) version.

DBT dashboards provide accurate real-time information about the position of supply, availability, the requirement of various fertilizers. It can be accessed by any general public at https://urvarak.nic.in. PoS 3.0 Software captures sale to different categories of buyers, generate sale receipts in multiple languages and provide soil health recommendations to the farmers to promote the balanced use of fertilizers. Desktop PoS Version is an alternative or added facility to PoS devices which is more robust and secure. DBT in Fertilizers received two awards namely, "SKOCH Gold Award for Governance'' on September 25, 2019, and "Governance Now" Digital Transformation Award on November 6, 2019.

Highlighting the efforts made by the government to ease the supply network for fertilizers in the country, Gowda stated that coastal shipping as an additional mode of transportation has been promoted. For this, the policy for reimbursement of freight subsidy for distribution of subsidized fertilizers through coastal shipping or and inland waterways was announced on June 17, 2019 and September 18, 2019. During FY'2019-20, 1.14 LMT of fertilizers has been moved through coastal shipping.

Referring to cost fixation rules for urea units union minister said that with the approval of CCEA, his Department removed the ambiguities in the modified NPS-III. This will facilitate a smooth implementation of modified NPS-III which will result in the grant of the additional fixed cost of Rs 350/MT to 30 urea units and grant of special compensation of Rs 150/MT to urea units which are more than 30 years old and converted to gas which will incentivise these units to remain viable for sustained production. It will also facilitate continued operations of the urea units resulting in the sustained and regular supply of urea to the farmers.

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