The chairman of the Poultry Farmers Union (UCPR), Ilie Van, says bird flu and unfair competition from import products are harming the entire industry and consequently quite many players have cut down their businesses.
Poultry producers in January posted losses standing at almost 13 million euros, in line with UCPR chairman estimations. These add up to another 35 million euros registered over the last three months of 2005.
Losses stem from the lower ex-works prices, the halt in exports, to farms not being populated, as well as from rising costs related to meat storage.
“We”ve seen no positive modifications as regards sales or ex-works sale prices at the slaughterhouses and exports haven”t been resumed, either.
“The more serious thing is that a large part of the poultry farmers have reduced their businesses, particularly small and middle-sized farms. This is reflected in the number of chicken being raised in January, which is 4 million head lower as compared with October,” says Ilie Van.
UCPR chairman maintains that poultry consumption in January was unchanged from December, namely 20,000 tonnes, more than 40% lower than four months ago.
“Producers need to be encouraged not to give up investments, because this difficult stage will be overcome. We must look around us and we will see that no neighbouring country has renounced its own development programmes aimed at the poultry sector”. For 2006-2009 period, chicken producers announced investments worth 170 million euros, in the context where the value of investments targeting this industry has topped 110 million euros over the last five years.
Ilie Van also says that some companies of the neighbouring countries already have marketing plans they will use to conquer certain segments of our market, though their poultry production conditions are inferior to those in Romania. “The biggest enemy of domestic producers is the unfair competition coming from chicken imports at dumping prices,” says Van.
In 2005, imports covered 42% of the market. Romania imported 158,000 tonnes of poultry, of which 92,300 tonnes from the United States and 40,200 tonnes from Brazil.
At present, custom duties for poultry imports stand at 45% and producers are asking they be raised to 70% for a period of six months.
UCPR chairman says that EU integration will bring positive changes for poultry farmers.
“We will apply agricultural, commercial, competition and food safety policies just like in the EU”. He also says that, at present, commercial policies in the poultry industry are far from the ones applied inside the EU. The issues of the poultry sector in the last four months made industry representatives change their communication system, to ensure a better operational co-ordination and consumer information.
“We found a communication problem right after the first bird flu cases came up,” Van said.