It is not Mr Singh's fault that he can confidently tweet about urea subsidy to farmers, without investigating how urea (fertilisers) are priced in India. It is mainstream media's fault that they hide the truth. 1/n https://twitter.com/diiaryofamadman/status/1357912455347752960

Urea is priced on an Import-Parity pricing basis, similar to other fuels, because most of urea in India is natural gas and Naphtha based. It is based on the price of imported urea + average cost of incidentals in importing it + average taxes & levies, & lowest fixed cost. (2/n)

What is relevant here is that since 2000, the government has been trying to fix 'gold plating' in urea production - showing high costs to get subsidy from the govt, but every reporter who covers this that every round of pricing policy has failed to address the issue (3/n)

In effect, urea companies get the subsidy and not farmers, since the companies artificially inflate their costs and take the difference between MRP & their 'fake' cost. MRP would be much lower for farmers if the real costs were implemented and SAME subsidy was given (4.n)

Even if we assume that fake cost calculations in urea has been curbed under the New Urea Policy of 2015 & has been further fixed through changes post-2019, there can be no doubt that gold-plating still continues. (5/n)

Farmers get about Rs.2400 subsidy per acre - using average urea, DAP & MOP requirements. The actual cost without gold-plating is probably half, leaving an actual subsidy TO farmers at Rs.1200 per acre. That's less than the avg tax outgo on diesel of Rs.1300/acre (30 lts) (6/n)

So, farmers are blamed for at least 50% of urea subsidy being pocketed by fertiliser companies. Secondly, the net outgo for farmers, just on diesel is more than the subsidy they get on fertilisers. Since farmers are not covered under GST, they cannot claim input credit (7/n)

This long boring thread is not meant to criticise those who are repeating the half-truths pushed out by mainstream media. They have no reason to investigate it, since they have other work to do. It is the journalists job to take the truth to readers/viewers (8/8)