Africa-Press – Tanzania. THE Dar es Salaam wholesale meat prices have plunged down by 21 per cent just a few days after Christmas and are projected to further go down.
The wholesale prices at Vingunguti abattoir, the largest slaughterhouse in Dar es Salaam dropped from 7,000/- a kilogramme to 5,500/- puzzling traders since most projected the price to remain high even after Christmas.
The ‘Daily News’ spot survey revealed that most meat wholesalers expected that the demand will continue to be high towards end of the year and slaughtered more cattle to meet demand.
However, the market went against their expectations.
The Vingunguti’s Abattoir Traders Association of Livestock and its Products Chairman, Joel Meshack, said the price dropped after demand slowed down abruptly unlike last year.
“This might be due to low purchasing power this festival,” Mr Meshack said.
He added that despite having sufficient supply the meat quality was low since at the end of the year pastures are drying out.
The Chairman also said another cause for high price was due to the fact that at the Pugu Auction there is no weighing scale hence animals are bought by estimating their weight.
“In many cases animals are estimated to have more kilos but when slaughtered are less than estimated. This causes traders to increase prices to compensate for weight loss,” Mr Meshack said.
The chairman said in most cases a cow may be estimated to have 100kg but in actual sense weighs 75 or 80kg. “The only option is to increase price to avert losses… and this was a major challenge during Christmas,” he said.
Few days before Christmas a cow with around 100kg was fetching between 800,000/- and 1.5m/- and those around 120kg and 200kg were auctioned between 1.5m/- and 2.5m/-.
Most of the cattle sold in Dar es Salaam are brought from Morogoro, Shinyanga, Arusha, Mwanza and few from Dodoma.
The Dar es Salaam’s main suppliers were Dodoma and Singida but after the government capital shift, the number went down and contributed dearly to price surge in Dar es Salaam.
This Christmas Vingunguti slaughtered over 1,000 cows up from normal amount of between 500 to 600 animals a day.
