Committee recommends Tk 364 crore purchase of 110,000 tonnes of urea fertiliser

The cabinet committee on government purchase has recommended approval of two proposals to import a total of 110,000 metric tonnes of urea fertiliser for the country's agriculture sector in the 2026-27 fiscal year. The total cost under the two proposals has been set at Tk 3,647,839,175 — about Tk 364.78 crore.

The two proposals from the Ministry of Industries were placed at the committee's 50th meeting of 2026, held on Monday. The committee recommended approval of both proposals.

The first proposal is to buy 30,000 metric tonnes of bagged granular urea from Kafco. According to government documents, the total cost of this purchase has been set at Tk 1,513,029,375. The price works out to 408.375 US dollars per metric tonne. Kafco has been named as the recommended supplier in the proposal.

The second proposal is to import 80,000 metric tonnes of bulk granular urea from Saudi Arabia's Sabic Agri-Nutrients Company. This will cost Tk 2,134,809,800. Here the price per metric tonne has been set at 401.67 dollars. Sabic, too, has been named as the recommended supplier in its proposal.

Placing the two proposals side by side shows that the per-tonne price for the Kafco purchase is higher than in the Sabic proposal. However, one proposal is for bagged fertiliser and the other for bulk fertiliser, so the overall cost difference cannot be judged by comparing per-tonne prices alone — the handling costs of bagged and bulk fertiliser are not the same.

Another proposal was raised at the same meeting. A proposal to import 20,000 metric tonnes of phosphoric acid for DAP Fertilizer Company Limited, through international tender, was withdrawn from the meeting's discussion at the request of the Ministry of Industries. As a result, the committee made no recommendation of approval on that proposal.

On the same day as the fertiliser purchase proposals, another decision came from a different committee. The cabinet committee on economic affairs, at its 43rd meeting of 2026 held on Monday, recommended in-principle approval for a development project of Kokil Textile Mills Limited in Brahmanbaria.

The project is proposed to be implemented through the Bangladesh Textile Mills Corporation (BTMC) under the Ministry of Textiles and Jute. The project is named in the documents as 'Development of Kokil Textile Mills Limited, Brahmanbaria'.

However, the documents contain no detailed information about the project's likely cost, source of financing, implementation timeline, production capacity or employment potential. A recommendation for in-principle approval is not final approval; those details are expected to become clear in the documents of the next stage.

Fertiliser imports matter directly to farmers. Both production and market prices depend on whether fertiliser supply holds up during peak seasonal demand. Advancing the purchase process in good time for the new fiscal year is therefore seen as part of ensuring supply security.

The two proposals are now at the stage of the committee's recommendation. After final approval, contracts with the suppliers and the shipment process will begin. The schedule for when this fertiliser will reach the country will be known at the next stage.

All told, Monday's meetings of two separate cabinet committees produced two kinds of decisions — the purchase committee's recommendation to approve the fertiliser buys, and the economic affairs committee's recommendation of in-principle approval for the textile mill development project.