August 3, 2007

South Korea's beef imports at its lowest in ten years

Beef imports in July are dropping by 7.6 percent on-year, the biggest drop in ten years after 9.1 percent in July 1997, according to the National Statistics Office (NSO).

Large discount stores have shelved US beef and prices of Australian, New Zealand and domestic beef and pork are sharply declining.

NSO says prices of stock farm products fell three times monthly in department stores, large discount stores and regular butcher shops in 38 cities nationwide. Currently, Australian products are the heavily reflected in the statistics along with some New Zealand products. US beef is not included yet because of its insignificant sales volume.

Only 70 tonnes of Australian beef were sold in Lotte Mart as against 120 tonnes of US frozen beef.

The fall in import beef prices also influenced those of Korean beef and pork, yielding a 3.8 percent and 9.4 percent year-on-year declines respectively in July.

A year-on-year decline in the pork prices has been reported for five consecutive months since March (-0.3 percent), while the Korean beef prices have also been falling for three months straight, recording -2.1 percent in May, -4.0 percent in June and -3.8 percent in July.