The Centre has approved an additional fertilizer subsidy of Rs. 28,655 crore for the rabi or winter planting season, which runs from October 2021 to March 2022. The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs approved the new nutrient-based subsidy rates for phosphatic and potassic fertilisers on Tuesday.

Unlike urea where the Centre sets a fixed maximum retail price, non-urea fertilizer prices are decontrolled, with the government fixing nutrient-based subsidy rates instead. The subsidy is paid to fertilizer companies as compensation for selling their products to farmers below market prices. Thus, the price a farmer pays for a 50-kg bag of di-ammonium phosphate (DAP), the most popular fertilizer after urea, would continue to remain at Rs. 1,200. The increased subsidy would offset the hike in global rates of DAP, nitrogen, phosphate and potassic fertilizers.

The Cabinet also approved the Rs. 2.77-lakh crore Atal Mission for Rejuvenation and Urban Transformation (AMRUT) 2.0 and the Rs. 1.41-lakh crore Swachh Bharat Mission-Urban 2.0 — both of which were launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on October 1. It also gave the green signal to a proposal to affiliate 100 government and private schools with the Sainik School Society, run by the Defence Ministry. They would admit 5,000 students in Class 6 from the next academic year 2022-23.

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