10th March, 2006 - Dhaka, Bangladesh: Stakeholders of the local poultry industry have been exploiting demand-supply gap in the poultry market increasing the prices of broiler chickens at their wills, market sources said.
"A kg of broiler chicken, which was sold at Tk 65-70 in December last year, is now being sold at Tk 85-90," said a broiler chicken retailer at the Karwan Bazar.
Currently a parent stock of broiler chic is being sold at Tk 32-33 compared to Tk 27-28 earlier. The price of poultry feed also increased by Tk 1-2 a kilogram, market sources said.
Atiqul Hafeez, Chief Operating Officer (COO) of the Sinha Agro Industries Ltd, a parent stock supplier company here, told BDNEWS that they have increased the prices of parent stocks for broiler to meet higher demand against shortages of supply.
He blamed the government for imposing ban on poultry imports from most of the countries without considering the consequences. "The government did not take any alternative measure for meeting local demands when it imposed ban," he said.
Atiqul said supply of parent stocks is now limited against almost higher demand a week. "The demand is increasing while the supply is decreasing by almost 5 percent a week," he said.
"We can supply 3.5 million parent stocks a week against the weekly demand of 4.0 million," Kazi Zahidul Hasan, Managing Director of the Kazi Firms Ltd, a local parent stock producer company, told BDNEWS.
The rest depends on import, he added. Zahidul said this supply shortage was the legacy of bird flu outbreak in Thailand and Malaysia in 2004 when the local industry was fully dependant on importing parent stocks from abroad.
He said currently there are five parent stocks producing companies that were established after 2004 for meeting local demand. "The supply gap which was created following imposition of imports ban is yet unmet," he said.
But our production capacity is increasing and we will be able to meet the full local demand within a couple of months, he said.
Asked about the higher prices of parent stocks, he said: "We fix the price of parent stocks in line with the import prices."
Currently the government imposed ban on imports of all types of poultry items from 35 countries.
According to the stakeholders, the local poultry industry is a market of Tk 120 billion. Nearly 2.5 million people are directly or indirectly involved with the industry.
