Unfair gas distribution policy has crippled fertiliser sector: FMPAC

Unjustifiable distribution policy of natural gas has crippled fertiliser sector in the last couple of years, reducing production of urea to bare minimum if compared with installed capacity and turning SNGPL based plants in to loss-making entities from profitable units within a span of only one year.

Fertiliser Manufacturers Pakistan Advisory Council (FMPAC) Executive Director Shahab Khawaja claimed this while interacting with members of Agriculture Journalists Association (AJA) the other day. He was accompanied by Fatima Fertiliser's Director Marketing Muhammad Zahir, Dawood Hercules Limited (DHL) Fertiliser's Senior General Manager Nadeem Tariq and Agritech's Faisal Muzzamil.

Representatives of fertiliser companies claimed that three fertiliser units were already on the brink of default while the sector had four times renegotiated its loan with the banks. The workers of these plants have to bear the brunt of government policies in the shape of lay offs.

Agritech, one of the oldest fertiliser plants, has already filed petition in labour court to lay off their workforce of 3,000 and other plants will also be forced if situation does not improve. Shahab Khawaja discussed in detail issues relating to fertiliser sector on behalf of newly established representative body of fertiliser plants in Pakistan.

He said fertiliser sector had become the biggest victim of flawed gas distribution policy, saying discriminatory policy of gas distribution to various sectors of economy caused a severe blow to urea manufacturing plants besides rendering thousands workers jobless.

He said that farmers also had to pay heavy price of unwarranted closure of fertiliser plants. In the last 18 months, he revealed, farming community braved additional burden of Rs 53 billion on account of only one input ie urea fertiliser. The fertiliser industry that had been set up several years back were facing dismal future as manufacturing process came to standstill due to natural gas, he said, adding that current installed capacity of 6.9 million tons per annum was sufficient to meet domestic demand of urea.

He said presently, Pakistan was ranked seventh in the world in urea manufacturing capacity. However, he lamented, a significant portion of this capacity was laying idle because of non-availability of natural gas, which was a raw material for manufacturing urea. Against installed capacity of 6.9 million tons, urea production has been faltered to just 4.4 million tons in 2012. Fertiliser plants located on SNGPL network were provided gas for only two months this year so far, he said. 

Copyright Business Recorder, 2012

Internet as important as agriculture to SA economy

By Nur Bremmen:

Internet use in emerging markets is exploding. In a country like South Africa for instance there are now 60% more internet users than there were two years ago.

That growth is good for the economy. In fact, it’s so good that the online sector contributes up to two percent (or US$7.1 billion) of the South Africa’s GDP.

According to a new collaborative study by internet research company World Wide Worx and Google, the internet that puts it in the same league as Agriculture (2.1%) and Utilities — Electricity, Gas and Water (2.6%).

The online economy is also growing much faster than the offline one. In fact it could account for 2.5% of GDP by 2015. Not bad for a country that only has an estimated 8.5-million internet users out of a 50-million strong population.

If you think it’s big tech companies that are going to see the biggest benefits of this boost to the economy, think again. The study suggests that Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) will gain most.

In fact, it found that SMEs with a website are almost three times more profitable than those without. Moreover approximately 20% of all small businesses surveyed revealed that they would not be able to survive without an online presence. With SMEs accounting for about 7.8-million jobs in the country, as many as 1.56-million jobs would be in jeopardy if not for the internet.

Thing is, things could be much better. At the moment, 17% of the country’s population access the internet. Although that number is likely to rise as smartphones come down in price, the country still lags behind some of the continent’s biggest internet users such as Kenya (25%), Egypt (26%), Nigeria (29%) and Morocco (49%).

The study reckons that the South African government needs to put the internet at the heart of its policies in order to avoid being left behind by other countries. Some of the ways it could do this include:

Investing in broadband infrastructure and putting in place policies to enable last-mile access by the private sector.

Unblocking regulatory challenges around right of way permits.

Taking a proactive approach with regards to reallocating unused spectrum.

And making e-governance a reality by putting government services online; encouraging SMEs to have a strong presence online.

Original Article Here