Despite being a cynical old bastard, every so often the ingenuity of the greedy can take me by surprise.For example, until today I wouldn't have considered fertilizer to be a target of international smugglers. Yet that is what is happening in Bangladesh. In fact, smuggling fertilizer to India and Myanmar, is now so rife that Bangladesh faces an acute fertilizer shortage. The price at local markets has also risen by around 3 to 6 cents per kilo.
This is how it works. Dealers buy each tonne of fertilizer from the Chittagong Urea Fertilizer Company (CUFCO). The dealers pay around $73.85 per tonne, but sell it to smugglers for between $89 and $92. The syndicates then smuggle them to India and Myanmar against $276.92 dollars) to $307.7 dollars) per tonne.
According to local daily, the Financial Express, about 630,000 tonnes of fertilizer are being produced in the Chittagong Urea Fertilizer Company (CUFCO). Of this about 300,000 tonnes are smuggled out to India and Myanmar.
There is an old British saying, "Where there's muck, there's brass."
