October 25, 2012

China's pork prices may improve in Q4 2012

China may see rising pork prices in the fourth quarter of 2012.

"In the fourth quarter, there is always high seasonal pork consumption and due to the Spring Festival effect, the country's pork prices and demand are fairly likely to recover," said Rabobank Netherlands on Wednesday (Oct. 24).

However, later, in the first six months of 2013, uncertainty would prevail on China's pork market, forecast the bank, reasoning that on one hand, China's pork supply would continue to boom but on the other, the extent to which China's economic slowdown would affect pork demand over the next year still remained an unanswered question, which meant it was hard for the bank to predict the future pork market trend.

During January and August, market hearsay said that over 10,000 breeding pigs, more than doubled the figure in the same period of 2011, were imported into China, indicating that Chinese large pig enterprises were still expanding their production capacity, which could lead to oversupply of pork in 2013 and reduce imports of pork over next three to six months, said the bank.