Bhubaneswar, Jan 20 (IANS): With the commissioning of five fertiliser plants, the Central government is expecting to achieve zero import dependency of urea in the country, said Union fertiliser secretary Chhabilendra Roul on Monday.

The government is reviving five closed fertiliser plants to increase urea production in the country and reduce imports.

"We expect our import dependency will be zero with the commissioning of the plants. The projects will nearly obviate the need for import of urea in the country, said Roul.

The five plants are located at Talcher in Odisha, Ramagundam in Andhra Pradesh, Gorakhpur in Uttar Pradesh, Sindri in Jharkhand and Barauni in Bihar.

While the present requirement of urea is 320 lakh metric tonne per annum, the current production is 240 lakh metric tonne. The five plants will produce 62.5 lakh metric tonne per annum, the secretary said.

Presently, India is importing 80 lakh metric tonne of urea, Roul said.

He said the coal gasification based fertiliser plant of Talcher Fertilisers Ltd is scheduled to be commissioned by September 2023.

The work at the plant is going ahead at full steam. About 10,000 people would get direct and indirect employment because of the plant, said the secretary.

The Talcher fertiliser complex would come up courtesy Talcher Fertilisers Limited (TFL), a joint venture of Rashtriya Chemicals and Fertilisers Limited (RCF), Coal India Limited (CIL), Gas Authority of India Limited (GAIL) and Fertiliser Corporation of India Ltd (FCIL).

A commitment of more than Rs 8,000 crore has already been made so far by TFL under various awarded contracts.

The project will have an output of 1.27 Million Metric Tonnes Per Annum (MMTPA) of 'Neem' coated urea using a blend of indigenous coal and petcoke as feedstock.