Agriculture and Food Security Minister, Indar Weir.
Weir hopeful savings will be passed on
While Barbadians are looking forward to cheaper chicken prices soon, it remains unknown if they will see these savings at local restaurants.
Speaking during Monday’s press conference at his Graeme Hall ministry, Agriculture and Food Security Minister Indar Weir however expressed hopes the lower prices would be passed on to citizens.
“If it will redound to the benefit of the fast food restaurants to drop their prices because the price of poultry overall has gone down it would be a good thing, and if I speak generally it is something I would expect to see, but this is speaking about a raw product and not a finished product,” he stated.
During the press conference, Weir outlined that due to the national shutdown caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, the poultry industry, which has been heavily impacted due to the closure of restaurants and hotels, had resorted to storage because of a glut of chicken on the market.
To address this, poultry producers have agreed to cut the price of this popular commodity by up to 30 per cent by as early as next week to sell off the large stocks currently in cold storage.
“They had to resort to storage, then they were running out of storage capacity because of the volume of poultry we have here. I met with poultry producers because I realise there are a lot of people involved and the level of investment at stake. The producers explained to me how they would manage this period and how they would try to get through this hoping everyone would get to the next stage, so we have agreed in principle to look at some initiatives within the first two-month measuring period I have identified,” he stated.
Therefore, an arrangement has been agreed to by the ministry and the poultry industry, which will see the state-owned Barbados Agricultural Development and Marketing Corporation (BADMC) suspending sales of imported chicken and turkey wings.
In addition, the BADMC will store some of the excess chicken for the poultry industry which currently is running out of storage capacity.