The sale of urea surged by 48.3 percent on a year-on-year basis to 509,000 tonnes in March 2022 against 343,000 tonnes in March 2021. According to the latest monthly report of urea offtake issued by the National Fertilizer Development Company (NFDC) on Friday, during Rabi 2021-22 (Oct-March), urea offtake was 3,320,000 tonnes, up by 3 percent compared to Rabi 2020-21. The report noted that the price of a 50kg bag of Sona Urea in the domestic market during the said month inched down by 1.9 percent on a month-on-month basis to Rs1,936 while the price of urea produced by other groups went up by 2.7 percent over February 2022. In the international market, the Fob bulk China urea price was quoted at $550-900 per tonne in March 2022. Fob bulk Middle East prices were reported at $600-960 per tonne. Ex-Karachi price of imported urea was in the range of Rs6,381 to Rs10,468 per 50kg bag. According to the NFDC report, province-wise, urea offtake increased in Punjab and Sindh by 37 percent and 211 percent respectively. Its offtake decreased by 16 percent and 27 percent in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan on a year-on-year basis. The NFDC said that offtake during Kharif 2022 is expected to be around 3,402,000 tonnes. Total available urea would be about 3,414,000 tonnes including 3,214,000 tonnes of domestic production. Going by the report, the plan for the import of 200,000 tonnes of urea needs to be materialised immediately; otherwise, a shortage may occur during June and onward. Meanwhile, the country’s overall nutrients offtake jumped by 13.5pc to 332,000 tonnes during March 2022 from 293,000 tonnes in the same month last year. Among the nutrients, nitrogen offtake increased by 34.5 percent to stand at 278,000 during March 2022, while phosphate and potash offtake went down by 37.6 percent and 32.4 percent when compared to March 2021. The report underlined that about 843,000 tonnes of different fertilizer products were produced in Pakistan during the month of March 2022. The major share was of urea (70.7pc) with 596,000 tonnes. Other products were DAP (77,000 tonnes), Nitrophos (78,000 tonnes), CAN (72,000 tonnes), SOP (1,400 tonnes), SSP (8,700 tonnes) and various grades of NPK (10,000 tonnes). Total imported supplies were 71,000 tonnes comprising 50,000 tonnes of urea, 19,000 tonnes of DAP 200 tonnes of SOP and a small quantity of MOP i.e. 1,500 tonnes during March 2022.