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Poultry industry in West Africa struggling to deal with cheap poultry imports

01 December 2010

Farmers and industry stakeholders in Ghana are concerned that poultry imports are seriously damaging domestic poultry production. According to press reports, Mr Ernest Owusu-Afari, Managing Director of Maridav, a leading supplier of animal health and nutrition products, claimed ‘there is an urgent need to balance the needs of the Ghanaian poultry farmer against the needs of the population at large’. At a recent seminar for poultry farmers in the Ashanti region of Ghana he took the view that ‘it is a little short-sighted to open the floodgates to the extent to which we have done over the past couple of decades’, for ‘in so doing we have weakened the Ghanaian poultry farmer’. The director of a poultry farm highlighted the problems faced by producers of ‘uncompetitive interest rates, the lack of subsidies for of maize production and tariffs to enable poultry farmers to compete with products coming from other parts of the world’, and considered that these need urgent actions from the government.

According to Commod@frica, African poultry imports have increased from 260,000 tonnes in 2000 to 666,000 tonnes in 2007, and could reach 886,000-1.067 million tonnes in 2010. Ghana accounts for 11.3% of these imports, while South Africa is the recipient of 31.5%, and Angola 20.6%. In South Africa, the main supplier is Brazil, with 72% of imports, while the US has been increasing its exports in recent years to African markets including those of Angola and Ghana. There are concerns that these imports are forecast to grow in the coming years, according to the article.

Closer to home, the governments of Côte d’Ivoire and Burkina Faso have decided, with the assistance of a US-funded trade promotion project, to lift a four-year ban on animal trade between the two countries. ‘Enacted in 2006, the prohibition was aimed mainly at poultry following an outbreak of avian influenza (AI) in Burkina Faso’, and the disease is no longer widespread.

Dr Ismael Ouedraogo, the USAID project leader, said that a number of activities had helped to accelerate the lifting of the ban, such as ‘extensive regional studies including a baseline review of poultry trade and an assessment of the market information services needed’ by the industry; workshops to build organisational capacity of industry associations and knowledge on bio-safety issues. Other bans in the region remain between Ghana and Burkina Faso, Mali and Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana and Togo, and elsewhere in West Africa.

In Nigeria the issue of regional trade has also arisen, with poultry industry producers concerned by the level of illegal, ‘smuggled’ chicken from neighbouring countries. ‘Most of the poultry products that find their ways through the country’s borders pose health hazards to consumers, the condition which these products are brought in calls for concern as most of them are hidden in petrol tankers’, reports the president of the poultry association, Mr Femi Faniyi, in a press article. The article also raises other issues faced by poultry producers which could be addressed with government support, for example improved access to agricultural inputs such as fertilisers for grain growers, a decrease in expensive maize and soya feed costs, and high interest rates.

Editorial comment

Despite the many calls from Ghanaian poultry producers for a higher tariff rate, the import tariff remains at 20%. In 2003, the government considered an additional tax of 20% on imports, but eventually came back to the initial tariff of 20%, giving rise to the request by an industry stakeholder ‘to balance the needs of the Ghanaian poultry farmer against the needs of the population at large’, i.e. consumers. In contrast, Ghana’s neighbour, Côte d’Ivoire, has chosen to put the emphasis on the development of poultry production, where this policy has proven successful in increasing output and employment in the industry (see Agritrade article ‘ West African concerns over poultry imports’, September 2010).

The removal of the trade ban between Côte d’Ivoire and Burkina Faso could well prove successful in enhancing poultry trade between the two countries. The activities that were carried out in the process of working towards the lifting of the ban shows the level of commitment and resource required to build capacity and confidence across the industry, and reflect the problems of a number of ACP countries faced by cheap imports. These problems are also illustrated by Nigeria’s current experience.

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