December 19, 2006

Philippine poultry firms jack up chicken imports

Philippine poultry giants San Miguel Corporation (SMC), Bounty Agro Ventures and Tyson Agro Ventures have increased their chicken imports over the weekend while others did the same as the industry prepare for the Christmas holidays.

As of last week, The Manila Bulletin Daily reported that chicken imports by SMC had already reached 700,000 kilogrammes, while 625,000 kilogrammes of approved imports of Bounty Agro Ventures and Tyson Agro Ventures

has arrived on December 15. Imports by Swift Foods were expected to reach 343,344 kilogrammes by December 17.

A total of 1.2 million kilogrammes of chicken imported by Bounty and Tyson are expected to arrive before Christmas, along with 1.175 million kilogrammes more from SMC, and 515,000 kilogrammes from Swift.

Other companies like QSR Corporation, Universal Robina, JARE, and Foster Foods have import allocations of 650,000 kilogrammes.

These imports do not yet include the remaining Minimum Access Volume (MAV) allocations of other stakeholders like the KFC Group, Purefoods- Hormel, and Sub-O/Mayon, totalling 3.26 million kilogrammes.

Earlier, an initial import volume of three million kilogrammes of whole chicken and leg quarters was agreed upon in a consultative meeting between Department of Agriculture officials and industry players.

The Philippine Association of Broiler Integrators, Inc. (PABI), which is made up of big farm integrators, lost two million kilogrammes worth of bird capacity, while the United Broilers' Raisers Association (UBRA), which is the group of the smaller commercial growers, lost one million kilogrammes, data from the Bureau of Animal Industry (BAI) show.

Agriculture Secretary Arthur Yap said that the DA will strictly monitor chicken imports to make sure the arrival of the approved import volume is completed by end-December.

He also assured stable prices during the holidays as previously-approved chicken imports are arriving and cold storages in Metro Manila already contains 1.5 million frozen stocks that will be replenished with the arrival of the imports.