February 28, 2007	Wednesday	Safar 10, 1428

KARACHI, Feb 27: Poultry industry continues to play havoc with broiler prices further pushing them up to Rs90 on Tuesday from Rs88 per kg on Monday. Earlier they had raised the rates to Rs86 on Feb 19 from Rs72 per kg on 9th of the month.

On Feb 1 and Jan 1, 2007, poultry live bird was selling at Rs74 and Rs66 per kg, respectively. The net increase in broiler rates has come to Rs24 per kg from Jan 1 till to-date.

Retailers are now charging Rs160-165 per kg for broiler meat as compared to Rs140-150 per kg on February 19. Now the chicken meat has become costlier than beef (bachia with bones) meat, which is available at Rs140-150 per kg. Beef without bone is priced at Rs200 per kg. Mutton price ranges between Rs250-260 per kg.

The federal and the provincial governments appear least bothered in taking any interest in checking the phenomenal jump in prices and its main causes since January this year.

Instead of taking any action, the government has come out with increase in power tariff by 10 per cent, thus giving an open hand to the market forces to further jack up prices on this pretext.

General Secretary Karachi Wholesalers Poultry Association (KWPA) Kamal Akhtar Siddiqui gave a routine answer by linking the fluctuation in rates to demand and supply situation. He said, currently supply of birds from the farms has been slow due to lower production of birds as against the increasing demand.

Although the marriage season is yet to take off at full pace Mr. Kamal did not give any reason for surge in demand but said only that people were now more interested in consuming chicken rather than beef and mutton.

Central Chairman Pakistan Poultry Association (PPA) Mir Tahir Zaidi told Dawn from Lahore that farmers had put very low quantity of day-old-chick at the their farms during the last two months because of cold weather.

He said that the industry gauges the sale of birds on monthly sale figures of poultry feed. For the last two months there has been a drop of 20 per cent in sales.

From this week the sale has started improving which means that production of birds will return to normal in March. Tahir said that the day-old-chick price is now Rs20 as compared to Rs4 to Rs5 two months back.

He said price situation will come under control as the new flock is under preparation. He added that the price hike in Karachi was far higher than in Punjab because farmers in Karachi had put up some quantity of chicks for production in winter season.

He said the fluctuation in prices had nothing to do with the two bird flu cases detected on February 6 in Rawalpindi in domestic chicken and peacock.