The Planters’ Association of Ceylon (PA), the apex body of Sri Lanka’s plantation industry, has warned that the country is sliding into a second fertiliser crisis five years after the 2021 chemical fertiliser ban, as the Hormuz shipping collapse chokes off global supplies.
In a statement released yesterday, the PA said shipping traffic through the Strait of Hormuz has fallen by around 90% since the waterway was disrupted, cutting off the route for roughly one-third of the raw materials used in global fertiliser production. Iran — the world’s fourth-largest urea supplier after Russia, Egypt and Saudi Arabia — is among the producers whose exports have been squeezed.
World urea prices have risen from $460 a tonne at the end of February to $690 by March 30, the PA said, while China has simultaneously halted exports to protect its domestic supply. A March 15 analysis from the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation projects global fertiliser prices averaging 15% to 20% higher through the first half of 2026 if disruptions persist.
For Sri Lanka, the shortage is biting just as the Yala cultivation season begins. University of Peradeniya Senior Professor Buddhi Marambe has estimated that paddy alone requires 98,800 tonnes of fertiliser, but current national stocks cover only about 60% of the requirement. Agriculture Deputy Minister Namal Karunaratne has announced a 25,000-tonne urea shipment due this week, which the PA said will only meet a fraction of the sector’s needs.
The PA welcomed the government’s decision to raise the fertiliser subsidy for additional crops to Rs. 18,000 and its outreach to Russia and India for supply deals. But it warned that “the next two to four months will have a significant impact on annual crop yields” and that the shortfall could flow through to the balance of payments, inflation and rural purchasing power.
The statement explicitly invoked the 2021 crisis, when a sudden ban on chemical fertiliser imports triggered a calamity in the plantation sector that took four years to recover from. “Just as progress was being made, the current fertiliser issue has emerged,” the PA said.
The association also called on the government to widen the pool of authorised fertiliser distributors, arguing that the current concentration limits the sector’s ability to respond to the supply shock.
