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Poultry meat imports stopped short by high tax
While the domestic poultry breeding has recovered well, the purchasing power remains very weak, according to Nguyen Thanh Son, Deputy Director of the Livestock Breeding Department under the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD). The poultry meat imports have decreased sharply due to the tax increase.
According to Son, the frozen poultry meat imports in the last few months of the year decreased sharply to 1,700 tonnes in November and less than 2,000 tonnes in December 2008.
While in the first eight months of the year, enterprises imported 108,401 tonnes of meat, or 13,500 tonnes a month. They only imported 5,363 tonnes in the last four months of the year, or 1,343 tonnes a month. Of the chicken imports, the by-products (legs, wings) accounted for nearly 80%.
The import tax on poultry by-products (fresh and frozen) has been raised to 20% as of October 12, 2008, and to 40% on poultry as a whole.
Son said that in 2008, the poultry flock increased by 6% in output and 10% in number of poultries. The meat price has been on the increase, but the purchasing power remains weak. Son believes that the purchasing power will remain low in 2009.
The meat price increase and the feed price decrease both have encouraged farmers to make investment in breeding, especially in fowl farming, in order to get chicken to sell on Tet days.
According to Agro Infor, the information centre under the MARD, the chicken price in Hanoi last week saw a further increase of VND 2,500/kg. Ready-made chicken were sold at VND 42,500/kg (the fowls raised in industrial way) and VND 82,500/kg (the Vietnamese-breeder chicken). In HCM City, the chicken price has risen by VND 7,000-10,000/kg in the last week.
Deputy Minister of the MARD Diep Kinh Tan on January 5, 2009 warned farmers against the bird flu epidemics which may break out as the north has been forecasted to fall into colder weather, a good chance for the H5N1 virus to spread.
Ha Yen
vietnamnet
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