September 21, 2006

Indonesia tallies the losses wrecked by bird flu

Indonesia's poultry industry has suffered a loss of at least 13 trillion rupiah (around US$1.4 billion) since the bird flu outbreak was confirmed in 2004, which caused chicken meat and egg prices to plunge, Hartono, chairman of the National Poultry Market Information Centre said Wednesday (Sep 20). 

In February-March 2004, Indonesia's chicken meat price took a hit when it dropped to one-third of its normal levels.

The 1,800 rupiah per kg price (US$0.20) was only 12 percent of production costs, Hartono said.

Prices went down again in July-October 2005 and small and medium-scale chicken farming businesses were hit particularly hard, he said.

The US$1.4 billion figure was only on poultry farms alone and did not cover losses from other related industries such as tourism or potential investments, officials said.