AMMAN: The volume of Jordan’s sheep exports during the first nine months of this year increased by 14 per cent compared to last year, officials at the Ministry of Agriculture said on Thursday. This year, the Kingdom exported a total of 387,700 head of sheep, Salah Tarawneh, the Agriculture Ministry’s assistant secretary general for marketing and information, said in a statement e-mailed to The Jordan Times. “In the month of September alone, the country exported over 36,000 head of sheep to the Arab Gulf market, which is a 75 per cent increase compared to the previous month, when 20,640 head of sheep were exported,” Tarawneh said.
Ministry’s Spokesperson Nimer Haddadin said that the increase in the country’s exports of sheep is due to a rising demand from the Gulf countries. “In addition, the ministry has been working hard this past year to increase the exports of live sheep to support cattle breeders,” Haddadin told The Jordan Times. He noted that exports to the Gulf countries are improving after a low demand in 2016. The ministry announced earlier this year that the Kingdom’s exports to the Arab Gulf market were expected to increase with the addition of Kuwait as a new destination for sheep exports. In 2016, the Kingdom exported some 450,000 head of sheep, over 70 per cent of which were destined for Saudi Arabia. The country’s exports of live sheep in 2016 dropped by 26.4 per cent compared to 2015, according to the ministry, which was mainly due a decrease in demand from Gulf countries. Results of a livestock census conducted by the Department of Statistics (DoS) in 2016 indicated that the number of sheep and goats in Jordan rose by 13.8 per cent compared to 2015. The number of sheep increased from 2.846 million to 3.261 million, while the number of goats rose from 939,000 to 1.044 million, according to the DoS.
