Africa-Press – Zimbabwe. The poultry industry registered significant growth in 2021 in spite of the COVID-19 pandemic with 90 million chicks produced, 5 million more than the 85 million produced the previous year.
According to poultry farmers, the growth came on the back of a good harvest which improved the availability of stockfeed.
Zimbabwe Poultry Association (ZPA) chairman Solomon Zawe said:
The poultry industry did well last year despite the COVID-19 pandemic, the bumper harvest was there thus production went on well and we produced about 90 million day-old chicks last year.
We didn’t go out of mark as we were producing almost eight million day-old chicks per month.
And up to now, we had some importation of hatching eggs which was good for the Ministries of Agriculture and Finance to give us a free duty to import from Europe and we did that.
Through Statutory Instrument (SI) 245 of 2020, the Government suspended duty on fertilised eggs for hatching by approved breeders.
In September 2021, players in the poultry industry requested the Government to make another import duty waiver on hatching eggs from outside the SADC region by an additional six months.
Before the introduction of SI 245 of 2020, egg and day-old chicks imports attracted 40 per cent duty.
Zawe said the cost of stockfeed remains a challenge as there is a shortage of wheat bran, maize bran and soya meal.
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