Energy and Mines Minister Mohamed Arkab said on Tuesday in Algiers that national fertilizer production has witnessed a qualitative boost in recent years, enabling it to cover the entire local demand.
Speaking at the National Agriculture Conference, held at the Palais des Nations (Club des Pins) under the slogan “Agriculture: for sustainable food security”, Arkab said that “the entire domestic demand for fertiliser has been covered thanks to the national production provided by the Sonatrach Group and its partners, strengthening the national market with more than 300,000 tonnes of urea”.
In the same context, the Minister underlined the signing of 116 fertilizer supply contracts with the ASMIDAL Group and private operators, in order to ensure its supply throughout the national territory without resorting to imports.
“We intend to continue working in greater depth, on a constant basis, with all sectors to meet the local national market and to offer different types of fertiliser through local production,” the minister added.
He also highlighted the adopted mechanisms aims at ensuring price stability on the national market, that enable to protect the Algerian farmer from the fluctuations in international fertiliser prices, that reached very high levels’.
The Minister recalled, in this context, the importance of the phosphate complex project in the east of the country to supply the local market with raw material for the production of compound fertilisers and to export the overproduction, thus increasing the volume of the country’s non-hydrocarbon exports.
In addition to fertilizers, the energy and mining sector contributes greatly to the achievement of food security through the connection of agricultural areas to electricity and gas for the food industry, said Arkab who recalled the connection of 30,000 farms out of a total of 57,000 in electricity by the end of 2022 for a total cost of 74 billion DA.
The Minister also said that his sector intends to “increase the capacity of clean energy to develop agriculture through renewable and innovative solutions with the improvement of the performance of the use of energy and new and renewable energies on all agricultural systems for a sustainable food security”.
