According to Abdulla Salatt, chairman of the company’s fertilizer unit (QAFCO), Industries Qatar–the country’s largest firm by market cap–will increase production of urea (used as a nitrogen-release fertilizer) and related products to supply growing global demand with a specific focus on South America, and in particular, Brazil.  “We are thinking of sending more products to Brazil because it is a big agriculture country, consuming a lot of urea, and we see their appetite for urea opening up year after year,” Sowaidi told reporters.  The company is currently contemplating a proposed $610 million plant which would increase urea production to 5.6 million tons/year by 2012, up from the current rate of 3 million.  Upon completion the fertilizer unit would hold 15% of global urea production, say analysts.  Urea has the highest nitrogen content of all solid nitrogenous fertilizers in common use (46.7%).

The company overall is still reeling from recession,

EFG-Hermes, a Cairo-based investment bank, noted to investors last week that it expects the Egyptian pound to fall to LE 5.70 by the end of 2009 and LE 5.90 by the end of June 2010 relative to the U.S. dollar. The pound has strengthened by 2.2% against the dollar since March, hurting exports and in-turn stalling GDP growth–which is set to fall to 3.1% in 2009-2010 from 4.1% in the year prior, the firm posited. “With credit growth slow and low loan-to-deposit ratios, exchange rates are a more effective channel than bank lending for supporting growth, by improving export competitiveness. The Nominal Effective Exchange Rate (NEER) has been stable since June, but we think that the [Central Bank of Egypt (CBE)] will encourage some trade-weighted EGP depreciation before the end of 2009,” speculated EFG economist Simon Kitchen to investors. Yet while Kitchen’s theory makes