As part of a move to meet the increasing demand, the Ministry of Farming and Natural Resource is set to exploit the full potential of fertilizer blending facilities built at a cost of 175 million birr.
The five facilities erected with the stated sum in Amhara, Tigray, Oromia and SNNP regional states were unable to meet farmers’ demand as they failed to blend fertilizer with their full capacity, according to the ministry.
Ethiopia consumes huge amount of foreign currency to purchase fertilizer to meet its annual demand, which is estimated at 1.2 million tons.
Dr Kaba Urgessa, State Minister of Farming and Natural Resource, pointed out that the country could have saved the spending to some degrees if the facilities had commenced blending with their full potential.
According to him, the facilities built at Becho and Nekemte (Oromia), Mekelle (Tigray), Bahir Dar (Amhara) and Werabe towns (SNNP) have the capacity to blend 500,000 quintals of fertilizer per annum.
However, due to lack of raw materials and skilled manpower, coupled with failures of regional states to report their demand on time, the facilities were not supplying fertilizer with their full capacity, Dr Kaba said.
Following a discussion held recently, we put forth directions and solutions to address the gaps as well as to achieve the target set out to meet the increasing demand of farmers for fertilizer locally, the Minister finally said.
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