FAISALABAD: Senior Vice President Faisalabad Chamber of Commerce and Industries (FCCI) Dr Sajjad Arshad has said that the government should facilitate the poultry sector for provision of cheap protein to the public.
Addressing a meeting of the poultry farmers, he said that the poultry sector is at the verge of collapse as every poultry farmer is bearing hefty losses of Rs.7 million.
This loss has now become unbearable and if this situation continued, it would not only have an ill impact on the export of eggs and chicken meat but also deprive people of cheap source of protein readily available in Pakistan at affordable rates, he added.
He said that Pakistan is annually producing 17,500 million eggs and 1440-million-kilogram chicken meat. In 2022, we exported 16.8 million eggs while in 2024, chicken meat and chicken products of 115,664 tons were also exported.
He said that in Pakistan the ratio of consumption of chicken meat is only 7.20 kilogram while every Pakistani take only 88 eggs per annum which is far below than the international standard.
He expressed concern over some policies which are detrimental to the steady growth of this sector and said that the recent imposition of sales tax has further aggravated the situation which would be a last nail in the coffin of the poultry sector.
He also expressed concern and said that agri farmers have been exempted while sales tax has been imposed on the poultry farmers. He demanded that both sectors must be treated equally and the sale tax imposed on poultry sector may also be withdrawn.
He said that due to the continuous losses, poultry farmers are consuming their actual capital instead of earning profit. He warned that farmers would be unable to add new chicks due to the liquidity problems and poultry farms would also start closing. “This situation will create an acute shortage of chicken meat in the domestic markets”, he said and added that 40% of our population was already facing the challenge of malnutrition while the same number of children are subjected to stunted growth.
This situation would further aggravate and our next generation may be a crippled one due to the non availability of protein, he said and demanded that the government must revisit its policies and facilitate the poultry sector to ensure availability of cheap protein so that Pakistan could nurture a healthy generation which could face the emerging challenges.
