Juan Guillermo Zuluaga, Colombia's Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, recently announced that it will eliminate tariffs on certain fertilizers and pesticides in the next two years to reduce farmers' cultivation costs. Zuluaga said the policy will be implemented after making a request to the Customs, Customs and Foreign Trade Commission.
The products that cancel the tariff include ammonium sulfate, double salt, calcium nitrate, and ammonium nitrate mixture, urea and ammonium nitrate mixture, mineral fertilizer and
insecticide. Zuluaga stressed, “This initiative will apply to batches of fertilizers and pesticides designed to enhance the competitiveness of rural Colombia.”
These agricultural inputs are critical to agricultural production, and since most of these products are imported, prices are vulnerable to exchange rate changes. In recent years, the price increase of such products has led to an increase in agricultural production costs, which has become one of the biggest expenses in agricultural production.
The flexibility of the production cost structure helps to increase the competitiveness of export products and reduce the cost of producers. In addition, another purpose of the decision is to expand the area planted and the market for such raw materials.
The decision will be the third Colombian resolution to reduce tariffs on imported fertilizers and pesticides. The first decision was made in September 2013, the decree 1989, and the second was the decree 2180 issued in November 2015. The two decrees have a term of two years.
This is what we are so happy about in the
agrochemical company.
Allen