Ukraine market crisis forces increased poultry imports

//21 Mar 2012
A market crisis could see Ukraine increasing its volume of poultry imports by 30-40% in the first quarter of 2012, according to data revealed by Deputy Director of Ukrainian Agrarian Confederation, Alexander Yaroslavsky. Imports of pork and beef could double.
In the first quarter prices for pork could rise by 8%, beef by 19% and poultry by 22%, while the price for eggs already increased almost by 40%. It is clear that this is only the beginning. The number of poultry in all categories of farms could reduce by 6% by the end of the first quarter of 2012, the volume of production could reduce by 3%, while the volume of sales of domestic production is forecast to reduce by 1.2%.

Experts state that the sudden crisis in the market mostly affects pork production, with poultry meat production being affectd on a lesser scale.

Alexander Yaroslavsky said that within two months of this year, the pace of development of Ukrainian livestock industry has been rapidly falling. Producers say that the significant rise in prices and the acute shortage of internal production could be explained by the increase of cost of soy meal, maize, compound feed and vitamins. Experts predict that if the crisis will continue in the second half of 2012 then the rate of poultry production will decrease by 8%-10%.