MIIT to Issue Development Program for Fertilizer and Pesticides    

China's chemical fertilizer and pesticide industries both faced problems of capacity surplus and low concentration for sites, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) recently pointed out in a notice to the local governments. Reversely, the potash resource is in short supply.
   The provincial and local governments are noted that MIIT is in a hurry to modify and complete the special development programs for the chemical fertilizer and pesticide industries and tries to make them effective this year. The ministry is also promoting to edit the permit conditions for the synthetic ammonia, urea, phosphate fertilizer, compound fertilizer and potash fertilizer industries, raising the requirements on indexes of quality, environmental protection, safety and energy consumption. The establishment of the industrial policy for the pesticide industry and the management regulation for the pesticide production will be accelerated too.  
   China has a capacity to produce 65 million tons of urea per year in 2009. Up to now the combined capacity of the urea projects that are being constructed and planned is around 10 million t/a. China's capacity to produce phosphate fertilizers reached 20 million t/a, with 20% in excess. The country consumes approximately 8 million tons of potash fertilizers per year, of that, around 4 million tons are imported. MIIT also predicted that China will produce 32.2 million tons of urea in 2010, up 9.7% over the prior year, 15.5 million tons of phosphate fertilizers with a growth of 4.75%, 4 million tons of potash fertilizers with an increase of 9.4% and 2.3 to 2.4 million tons of pesticides.