According to the MARD, Vietnam consumes more than 10 million tons of fertilizer every year. At present, the total registered capacity of domestic fertilizer factories is 29.25 million tons. In the first six months, fertilizer production was about 4.69 million tons, up 11.7 percent. Director of the Vietnam Chemicals Agency under the MoIT Nguyen Van Thanh said that high increases in input materials, transportation difficulties, and logistics activities affected by the Covid-19 pandemic caused the fertilizer prices to hike.
Mr. Hoang Trung, Director of the Department of Plant Protection under the MARD, affirmed that the disruption of supply and demand was not the reason for the abnormal increase in fertilizer prices. Because, at present, there are 841 fertilizer factories across the country with a capacity of nearly 30 million tons per year, three times higher than the consumer demand. In the past seven months, factories have produced 2.5 million tons of fertilizer, an increase of nearly 200 million tons over the same period, and enterprises have imported 3.1 million tons, up 6,700 tons over the same period last year.
At the meeting, Deputy Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development Le Quoc Doanh requested that enterprises ensure a sufficient supply of fertilizer for agricultural production and must accompany and share difficulties with farmers by various measures. They must not increase prices and must prevent hoarding and speculation. To reduce input costs, Deputy Minister of Industry and Trade Tran Quoc Khanh suggested fertilizer manufacturers should rationalize costs, keep prices stable, and set a target that Vietnamese fertilizers are sold at lower prices than imported counterparts, providing farmers with fertilizers at the lowest prices. Deputy Minister Tran Quoc Khanh put forward a solution that the export of fertilizers should be halted to prioritize domestic agricultural production.
It is expected that the MoIT and the MARD will propose to the Government and the National Assembly to reconsider the value-added tax on fertilizer production. At the same time, they will assign the Market Surveillance Agency to prevent speculating and hoarding fertilizers, increasing prices, and producing and trading counterfeit fertilizers.
