“AN ANALYSIS OF INDIAN FERTILIZERS INDUSTRY “

Abstract

The Indian Fertilizer Industry has come a long way since its early days post-independence. India today is one of the largest producer and consumer of Fertilizers in the world. Fertilizers Industry, given its strategic importance in ensuring self-sufficiency of food grain in the country, has for decades, been under government control. The government has over the years provided subsidies/concessions through the fertilizer companies to farmers and the manufacturers have been compensated through various schemes. In this research Paper discuss the challenges and problems faced by the fertilizer sector highlighting on the activities which are anti-competitive. Starting with a brief overview of the Agriculture, I take into consideration the Fertilizer sector specifically wherein I discuss about the present status, growth of the industry and foreign trade of fertilizers. The last part of the report brings out the study of the sector under the ambit of Porter’s Five

Forces Model followed by the challenges and problems in fertilizer sector. Lastly discussing what can be the role of CCI in solving the issues discussed. Government has opted new regime of subsidy regime and has also new price policy regime aimed at achieving to total deregulation in the sector. Practice of collusion and abuse of dominance are the cases which this sector can be prone to, reason being the less number of players in this market and also the bargaining power of buyers(here farmers) is low, also lack of monitoring lead to anti-competitive at the level of distribution of fertilizers to end consumers. Since fertilizer sector directly influences in agriculture, impacting prices and making food more expensive, thus the fertilizer study becomes of the utmost importance.