Poultry Prices Increasing

Effective today, consumers will be paying an average of ten cents more per pound of wholesale chicken. The poultry product, which is one of the country’s cheapest sources of protein, is registering yet another nationwide price increase. The uptick, according to Armando Cowo, manager of the Poultry Association of Belize, is attributed to the constant increase in the processing of poultry and the cost of local grain. Here’s how Cowo explained why the increase is necessary:
 

Armando Cowo, Manager of the Poultry Association of Belize: “Some products will be selling at eight cents some at twelve but the average is ten cents. I guess depending on the cost of production and the different companies and so on. However it’s a small adjustment again, it’s not nothing out of this world. I mean I have seen other products on the market change price drastically over night like more than 50%. What we are doing here is just a ten cents per pound more basically on average which means that if you were buying a four pound chicken – let’s say you are paying three dollars a pound and you buy a four pound chicken that’s twelve dollars come Monday then you should be paying twelve forty I just hope that nobody takes it up toi sixteen, seventeen, eighteen dollars. The general reason is that the prices of the inputs that we’re using are not going down. They have stayed high, we import a lot of mineral substances from Europe those prices keep going up due to the war in Ukraine and Russia. Then again here at home with the corn prices, the corn prices are again not coming down and what normally happens to the industry we buy corn twice a year right ? And we can’t operate the industry on a level where you go every day and buy corn. So when we buy, we buy a six months supply and so far the price is high for the first six months of this year the corn prices are high, we don’t know what will happen after the next purchasing that our companies will do to generate the feed for the birds. So basically that’s the main driver.”