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Vietnam considers exporting urea, from 2012
Vietnam, which once had to rely on urea imports to develop agriculture, now can satisfy the domestic demand itself. Especially, it is considering exporting urea from this year.
The Fertilizer Association of Vietnam FAV has said that from 2012, Vietnam would become self-sufficient in urea, when the 800,000 ton per annum Ca Mau Fertilizer Plant of the Vietnam National Oil and Gas Group (PetroVietnam) and the 560,000 ton per annum Ninh Binh Fertilizer Plant of the Vietnam Chemical Group become operational, raising the total capacity to 2.36 million tons, double that of 2011.
Meanwhile, it is estimated that the demand for urea would be 1.8 million tons only in 2012. As such, Vietnam now can not only satisfy its demand, but also has products in excess for export. With the current production capacity, the supply may be higher by 560,000 tons per annum than the demand.
Meanwhile, analysts have forecast that the domestic urea output would keep rising. The output would exceed the 3 million ton threshold by 2015. The Ha Bac Fertilizer Plant is expanding the production to increase the capacity from 200,000 tons to 500,000 tons by 2015. Meanwhile, Cong Thanh group is also considering making nitrate from coal dust with its 560,000 ton per annum plant located in Tinh Gia district of Thanh Hoa province.
According to FAV, exporting fertilizer is the solution for Vietnamese manufacturers to ease the competition on the domestic market. However, in the export markets, Vietnamese products would have to compete fiercely with the products from China, Thailand, the Middle East and Russia.
Analysts have pointed out that Africa proves to be a good market for Vietnamese fertilizer exporters. However, there are latent risks on the market, because African banks in the countries do not ensure the payment. Therefore, if the government of Vietnam can sign the agreement on payment guaranteeing with the African governments, the exports to the markets would increase very rapidly.
According to FAV’s Secretary General Nguyen Dinh Hac Thuy, the fertilizer price much depends on the coal and gas prices, and the apatite prices as well, because these are the input materials for fertilizer production.
Therefore, Thuy has called on the fuel suppliers to apply reasonable policies on fuel prices, and called on the Ministry of Finance to set up reasonable tax policies in order to facilitate fertilizer exports.
According to the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development MARD, Vietnam would need some 9.8 million tons of fertilizer of different kinds in 2012. This includes 3.5 million tons of NPK, 2 million tons of urea, 1.8 million tons phosphate, 950,000 tons of DAP, 920,000 tons of kali and 710,000 tons of SA.
Of these products, Vietnam will be self-sufficient in NPK, phosphate and urea by 2012. Meanwhile, as for DAP, the 330,000 ton Dinh Vu DAP Plant in Hai Phong City can only satisfy 35 percent of the total demand, while the other 65 percent will still be fed by imports.
The Vietnam Chemical Group is speeding up the project on building a DAP plant in Lao Cai province which has the same capacity with the Dinh Vu’s plant.
As such, after some more years, the DAP imports would decrease significantly. Meanwhile, Vietnam will still to import SA and kali, because no domestic plant can make these two kinds of products.
Vietnam now has everything needed to make ammoniac, the material for SA production. Meanwhile, if the project on exploiting and processing mine salt in Laos is implemented, Vietnam will be able to produce kali for the domestic market.
vietnamnet
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