RCF shelves plan to set up fertiliser plant in Ghana

State-run Rashtriya Chemicals and Fertilisers (RCF) has shunned plans to set up a fertiliser plant in Ghana, which envisaged an investment of about $1 billion, in lack of assurance about the gas supply from Ghana government. Back in 2010, both the countries, vis-a vis, India and Ghana, inked Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to set up the urea plant with initial capacity of 1.2 million tonnes per annum at Shama district in western Ghana. As per the MoU, both the countries had to nominate each company from each side for executing the project. However, in June 2013, Ghana government denied assured supply of gas for the plant citing power generation as priority for them over fertiliser production. The project for long was stuck on the issue of assured supply of gas, and cheaper gas was the main reason for which RCF was eyeing this project. Presently, RCF has annual capacity of 2.5 MT of urea and 7 lakh tonnes of complex fertilizers. Meanwhile, the domestic urea production in the country is stagnant at 22 million tonnes (MT) since 2007-08, while the current demand is about 30 MT.