State gears up for fertilizer DBT from January 1

18 December 2017

Fertilizer companies were asked to ensure point of sale devices were deployed with all retailers by December 20 to enable implementation of direct benefit transfer (DBT) in fertilizers in the State from January 1.

The preparedness for the implementation was reviewed at a meeting held here on Friday. The meeting chaired by Agriculture Production Commissioner C. Parthasarathi was attended by Director (Finance) of DBT Cell in the Ministry of Chemicals and Fertilizers Kavita Gotru, Commissioner of Agriculture M. Jaganmohan, State DBT coordinators Mayank Budhiraja and Gouthaman and others.

Noting that sale of fertilizers had been made mandatory through PoS in the State from January 1, Mr. Parthasarathi said the arrangements were being completed for going live in DBT.

Other stakeholders such as suppliers of PoS devices Analogics and Visiontek and representatives of fertilizer companies also attended the meeting.

Training conducted

Making a power point presentation the APC said subsidy would be released to manufacturers only on the basis of actual sales conducted by the dealers through PoS devices. He explained that 6,100 PoS devices were already distributed to the retail dealers in 30 districts in the State and multiple training sessions were conducted by the Agriculture Department. Lead fertilizer supplier Nagarjuna Fertilizers & Chemicals Ltd was told to arrange the remaining PoS devices at the earliest.

The suppliers of PoS devices were told to attend the defects in the field and rectify problems, if any. The APC suggested all the stakeholders to ensure 100% deployment of PoS devices before December 20.

The PoS system would also be linked to seeding of soil health cards and farmers’ Aadhaar numbers in future, Mr. Parthasarathi said and explained that the linkage would enable the policy makers to know the actual requirement of various fertilizers reducing the financial burden.

Meanwhile, as per the information made available on the website of the Union Ministry of Chemicals and Fertilizers, the number of retail suppliers of using PoS as on December 15 in Telangana stood only at 249.

Source: The Hindu