September 3, 2004

Philippine 2004 Broiler Industry Seen Up 4%

The 2004 Philippine broiler industry is projected to expand by nearly 4% this year, fueled mainly by the growing domestic and regional demand for domestic chicken meat, according to information from the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Foreign Agricultural Service web site, dated Sept. 1 and released Thursday.
 
Production
 
The Philippine broiler industry is forecast to produce over 660,000 metric tons of dressed chicken in 2004. The high cost of feed, however, continues to be a limiting factor in the sector's growth.
 
According to the Philippine feed milling industry, yellow corn makes up the bulk of most domestic poultry feed formulation. Data from the Bureau of Animal Industry (BAI) show that corn prices this year rose to over P12/kg from an average of P8.71/kg in 2003. In 2002, yellow corn was only P7-8/kg. Soybean meal prices increased from an average of P15.76/kg in 2003 to more than P22/kg this year. In 2002, soybean meal only cost P12-13/kg.
 
The rise in farmgate prices for broilers, which began in the third quarter of 2003, is partly attributed to increased feed cost. A supply shortage during the last quarter of last year also pushed up farmgate prices by as much as 41% in December 2003. Data collected from the Bureau of Agricultural Statistics (BAS) show a significant increase in the average price of dressed chicken during the last two months of 2003.
 
The Philippine Department of Agriculture announced a special duty-free importation of corn during the early part of 2004. This is an effort to lower the cost of meat in the market. However, due to increased world market prices of corn and soybean meal, the import scheme was not fully utilized by local traders. Only about 10,000 MT out of the announced 200,000 MT of corn was reportedly brought in.
 
The Office of the Philippine President issued Executive Order 300 (EO 300) in March 2004, lowering the applied tariffs on soybean meal and other feed preparations from 3% to 1% for a period of six months, ending in September 2004.