A revival package for the financially beleaguered Fertilisers and Chemicals Travancore (FACT) is under the active consideration of the Union government and “we are in the process of charting out a road map” for the company’s revival, said Union Minister for Fertilizers and Chemicals Ananth Kumar, here on Friday.
He was speaking to reporters on his first visit to Kochi as Minister for Fertilizers and after visiting the FACT’s petro-chemical complex.
“FACT is the pride of India” and one of the immediate aims of the Narendra Modi-led government is to revive fertilizer units that are either not doing well or are sick, he said about the goal set by the Prime Minister for India to achieve self-reliance in fertilizer production.
A Rs.991-crore financial package, recommended by the Board for Reconstruction of Public Sector Enterprises, has been pending for a while. Mr. Kumar said the government would act immediately on the issue.
About the time-frame, he said he had replied to Chief Minister Oommen Chandy on the same day he wrote to him about FACT’s present condition.
He said the Chief Minister had promised all help in reviving FACT. The State government was ready to revisit its stand on VAT on natural gas as well as to permit the use of about 640 acres of FACT land for diversification of production and capacity augmentation.
The price of natural gas, now being made available to FACT at $23.5 per mmBtu, is being looked into. While some fertilizer companies receive natural gas at $4.2 per mmBtu, some others are getting it at $8.2 per mmBtu. This is an issue that needed to be sorted out and the government had taken serious notice of it.
Besides achieving self-reliance in fertilizer production, the Union government had set the target of restoring the country’s soil health.
