Following the coronavirus outbreak, the domestic poultry industry is seeing a massive crisis and is forcing the farmers to bankruptcy. To overcome the crisis, the industry has sought a one-year grace period for repayment of current term loans as the sector claims an estimated loss of Rs 1,750 crore in the last two months following the outbreak.
“We request our government to support and provide rescue package to the poultry sector by extending relief and announcing to all the financial institutions that poultry farmers and companies account receivables of more than 90 days should not be considered as NPA and should extend additional working capital for 180 days. We also request an interest subvention of 5% loans extended to poultry sector for extension loans for the financial year 2020-21,” said Bahadur Ali, chairman, All India Poultry Breeders Association.
In a letter to the ministry of finance, the industry has asked the government to sell wheat and rice at the subsidised rate of Rs 10 per kg and allot minimum 30 lakh MT from Food Corporation of India (FCI). “The current loss of poultry industry, which include broiler farmers, integration companies and breeding companies, beginning mid of January to mid of February has a total loss impact to the tune of Rs 1,750 crore. As industry produces about 35 crore monthly commercial broilers, if these conditions persist in March also, there could be an additional loss of about Rs 1,750 crore per month,” Bahadur Ali said. “This will also impact and ruin maize and soyabean farmers because without poultry, there is no market for soyabean meal and maize in India. The prices of maize has dropped from Rs 25 to Rs 15 per kg in last few days,” he added.
The poultry sector employs more than 10 lakh farmers and contributes Rs 1.2 lakh crore to the country’s GDP directly. The industry is also giving direct benefit to more than one crore maize and soya agriculture farmers and providing market for soyabean and maize farmers in India. Poultry sector provides direct and indirect employment to more than five crore citizens of the country engaged in poultry production, trade, feed, agriculture crops, logistics, poultry based products, exports, among others.
To support the farmers, the ministry of animal husbandry, had earlier clarified that there is no relation of coronavirus with the poultry birds. This helped the poultry sector for a week but the repeated onslaught of social media with wrong information on consumers has shaken consumer confidence and depleted the demand for chicken products resulting into poultry birds being sold at a minimum of Rs 10 to Rs 30 per kg at the farm gate level. The cost of production of the poultry in India is about Rs 80 per kg. Every poultry farmer is suffering an average loss of Rs 50 per kg,” the members of poultry industry said.
The industry had faced a similar situation in 2006 when there was massive bird flu attack on poultry sector. The government of India had then provided relief measure to the poultry sector by announcing interest subventions and increasing credit duration to the poultry industry for a limited time period and provided millions of tonne of maize at the rate of Rs 4 per kg from the government stock.
