The entire poultry sector has become a political gimmick

Jul 23, 2023 Letters

Dear Editor,

Please allow me to state my dissatisfaction with the state of our poultry sector and I am doing so as a poultry farmer.

Firstly, President Ali held a poultry symposium at the Author Chung Conference Center recently where he announced government plans on importing chicken to facilitate a shortage they claimed which I know for a fact there is no shortage of chicken in Guyana.

What I do know for a fact is that there is an adequate amount of chicken but the fact that they aren’t properly vaccinated and the poor quality of feed produced locally farmers are running at a loss whereby instead of having 5 to 6 lbs of birds in six weeks you only get 4 to 4.5 lbs some even worse staggering at 3 lbs.

With this situation, farmers are forced to take their birds for another week or two which also drives up the cost per production. Presently the cost for producing 100 chickens in terms of feed is 10 to 12 bags anything more is guaranteed you running at a loss and I will address the cost of production in a more detailed version soon or later in another letter.

Now let’s look at the intervention with the poultry loans President Ali claimed he intervened in, 5% and below depending on the amount you’re borrowing is great fair enough, but let’s look at it in a way whereby you have young persons who are now venturing into poultry farming and also those who had already took loans from these commercial banks but run at a loss due to poor feed and vaccination quality, now if one looks at the requirements that were set by Demerara Bank Ltd, President Ali needs to firstly tell the nation where would a young fresh poultry farmer find those requirements just to acquire a loan of $500,0000 or less, I say this to say that it’s all a political gimmick. Yes, you got the banks to bring down the interest rates but what about the requirements? There needs to be a review of those requirements. Most of our poultry small and medium-scale farmers are operating on their own and do not have the kind of collateral the bank is asking for and that’s the hard fact.

Their requirements are way too much and with that it drives poultry farmers or I should say force them to be taking loans at IPED which has an interest rate of 20% to 30% but their requirements are very much minimal.

So in closing, if President Ali is really serious about food security and making Guyana self-sustainable he needs to look at things in a holistic manner and do the right thing listen to poultry farmers, and offer real solutions.

Your intervention means nothing unless you can negotiate with the banks to review their poultry loan requirements to benefit the small man. I am waiting to see the requirements from the other commercial banks by the end of the new week.

S. Conway

Demerara Bank Ltd, Farmer, gimmick, political, President Ali

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The entire poultry sector has become a political gimmick

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