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CAIRO: Fertilizer prices for 2022 have been revised up by an unprecedented 150 percentage points in the World Bank’s latest Commodity Market Outlook.

The World Bank report released in April said that the fertilizer prices are projected to rise by almost 70 percent in 2022 before easing in 2023.

“Risks to the outlook include supply disruptions in Russia and Belarus, higher input costs, and a prolonging of Chinese export restrictions,” the report added.

An Arab News analysis of the World Bank data shows the body had lifted its 2022 price projection for fertilizer by a more moderate 11.8 percentage points in its last report, released in October 2021.

The Bank’s price index for fertilizer rose almost 10 percent already in the first quarter of 2022 from a quarter earlier after it surged 80 percent in 2021 on supply constraints, soaring energy costs, and trade restrictions imposed in China and Russia, the Bank said in the report. 

World Bank’s 2022 price indices for energy, edible oils and meals, and grains were upwardly revised to 91.7, 75.1 and 55.9 percentage points respectively.

Over the past two years, the Bank’s price index forecast in nominal US dollars for fertilizer was upped by almost 187 percent from 78 to an all-time high of 223.7 points.

For comparison, over the same period, the Bank’s 2022 price projection for energy, edible oils and meals and grains has been revised upwards by 153, 101 and 64 percent, respectively.

2023 price projection

As for the price projection for 2023, fertilizer continues to lead in terms of the scope of the Bank’s revision with 82.2 percentage points from the previous estimate published in October 2021. This compares to 30.6, 19.0 and 16.2 percentage points upward revisions for the price of energy, grains and edible oils and meals, respectively.

“Russia and Belarus are major producers and exporters of fertilizers and their main input, natural gas,” the report pointed out, adding that the Ukraine war threatens further disruptions.