KARACHI: Poultry farmers have offered a mixed view of the budget for the upcoming fiscal year, saying that not all of their demands have been met.

In a statement issued on Monday, the Pakistan Poultry Association (PPA) said a reduction in the import duty on grandparent and parent stock, being the basic multiplication seed for poultry, will help spur poultry farming.

Grandparent birds are the progeny of pedigree stock bred largely by three global companies, Aviagen, Cobb-Vantress and Groupe Grimaud. They are the foundation of the poultry production sector. Parent birds are bred from imported chicks that produce broiler chickens.

The association said that its demand for bringing the sales tax on poultry farming machinery on a par with agriculture greenhouse tunnel farming has not been fully accepted.

Similarly, the PPA said its proposals to help the poultry processing industry fight against the duty- and sales tax-free imports of poultry products have also not been accepted.

At present, imports of value-added chicken products under free trade agreement with Malaysia are duty-free, imports from China have 10pc to 16pc import duty, whereas imports from India attract 5pc import duty. The association described this duty regime “extremely unfair” as “our inputs to produce those products have an incidence of 36.9pc to 58.4pc which includes 20pc customs duty, 15pc regulatory duty and 17pc sales tax on duty paid value”.

The association said the processing and value-addition of as little as 12pc of the total 1.4 billion broilers produced would yield revenue of around Rs3.8 billion through income tax, sales tax on packing materials, advertising, electricity and sales tax on other miscellaneous inputs.

Published in Dawn, May 30th, 2017