New Delhi: India is moving to import a record 2.5 million metric tons of urea, as a sharp jump in global prices threatens to raise the country’s fertilizer bill just weeks before the monsoon sowing season. Reports say offers received in the latest tender are in the range of about $935 to $959 per tonne, nearly double the price paid roughly two months earlier.
The purchase is being handled by state-run India Potash Ltd, which issued the tender to shore up domestic supplies as availability tightened in the wake of disruptions to Middle East supply routes and production. India, the world’s biggest urea importer, relies on such overseas purchases to bridge the gap between local demand and domestic output, especially ahead of peak farm demand.
The scale of the order is striking. Business Standard reported that the 2.5 million-tonne tender is roughly a quarter of India’s annual urea imports, underlining how seriously officials are treating supply risks before planting begins for crops such as rice, corn, and soybeans.
The price spike appears to be tied to the wider West Asia crisis. Recent reports say the conflict has disrupted fertilizer trade flows and added pressure to a market already sensitive to shipping bottlenecks, with a large share of global urea supplies linked to the Persian Gulf region.
For India, that leaves a familiar but uncomfortable trade-off: buy now at elevated prices to protect farm supplies, or wait and risk shortages at a critical point in the agricultural calendar. At the moment, the government appears to be choosing supply security over cost. That may keep the kharif season on track, but it could also widen the subsidy burden if global prices stay high. This last point is an inference based on the reported import scale, timing, and price surge.
