LAHORE
The immediate rise and rapid fall in the prices of chicken meat has been happening since long. The reason for it, most of poultry farmers claim, is that intermediaries or middlemen bag the lion’s share of the pie called poultry business, a million dollar industry in Pakistan with which livelihood of hundreds of thousands of individuals is attached.
The end consumer and poultry producer both blame the middleman. It is pertinent to mention here that in broiler industry business is operated through commission agents, feed dealers, and butchers who charge a certain amount as commission fee for their services.
Poultry shed owners and producers complain that commission fees of these middlemen are unjustifiably high.
Furthermore, in order to bag maximum profit from business transactions many of them resort to tricks and tactics ranging from inaccurate counting of flock, tampering the weighing scales, hoodwinking the farmer in transactions etc.
In the absence of any other arrangement, the farmers are condemned to make do with present arrangements.
According to an independent study aimed at documenting the role and share of profits amongst the retailers, commission agents and producers, the commission agents’ profit was highest compared to producer and even retailers.
Recently, the poultry sector of Pakistan welcomed the 2017-18 budget as in it government had reduced the import duty on grandparent stocks and parent stocks, the move was hailed by many in the sector as it has the potential to expand the farming sector.
However, the dissenting voices amongst Pakistan Poultry Association were of the view that its other proposals like sales tax and duty-tax free imports were not accepted at all.
In Pakistan where beef and mutton prices are beyond the reach of many, chicken meat has been considered an inexpensive alternative to beef and mutton and a cheap source of protein.
However, the high production cost, and ever-increasing taxes on imported feed has adversely affected both the producers, who are helpless; the end-consumer also suffers, who has to pay exorbitant prices.
The government during its budget of 2017-18 has reduced sales tax on seven different kinds of imported machinery for control of poultry sheds. Likewise, 5pc regulatory duty on import of Grandparent (GP) was withdrawn.
Interestingly, many skeptics believe that the benefit of this relaxation will be only to a handful of people as Grandparent import makes 1pc of the whole poultry industry.
It is estimated that the cost of overall poultry farming business has increased as around 80pc of poultry rearing cost is incurred on poultry feed, so some tax relaxation measures were expected to be announced, however, no steps in this direction were taken.
“The middleman is the king in poultry business. We the producers and end consumer are left high and dry as producers have to shoulder all the risk and consumer has to pay more for the chicken, while the middleman stands to gain come what may,” said Syed Talha Zaidi, a poultry businessman from Islamabad.
