Argentina’s Minister of Productive Development, Matías Kulfas, announced new lines of financing for Argentine poultry producers during a meeting with business leaders and sector representatives.
In the presence of the Minister of Agriculture, Livestock and Fisheries, Luis Basterra, and as part of a virtual event organized by the Argentine Chamber of Poultry Producers (Capia) and the Poultry Processing Companies Center (CEPA), Kulfas announced the new measures.
According to the official announcement, the credits aim to modernize the entire production chain of the poultry sector. However, they have not yet been implemented and are expected to be launched during the second half of 2021.
Meanwhile, the Minister of Productive Development explained that the financing is expected to offer “low and subsidized interest rates,” ranging between 22% and 24% annually.
As Kulfas anticipated, these credit lines aim to stimulate purchases from the metal-mechanic sector “to incorporate more domestic production,” as they include capital goods manufactured in Argentina.
“This is a State that helps generate guarantees for access to credit,” said the minister. He also stated that productive reactivation “goes hand in hand with producers, entrepreneurs, industrialists, and workers.”
For his part, the president of the Poultry Processing Companies Center, Roberto Domenech, joined Kulfas and stated that this initiative will be “extremely important for the sector,” because by optimizing efficiency, “poultry farming represents the solution to the global demand for animal protein, and that leads us to deepen all aspects of technology adoption.”
He also added that these investments “were necessary to achieve lower costs and higher productivity.”
Poultry farming is one of the most important sectors of the country’s agroindustry and a major supplier to Argentine households. With exponential growth over the past decades, it has nearly matched beef consumption — something unthinkable ten years ago — and has placed Argentina among the world’s top ten egg-consuming countries.
Currently, Argentina ranks ninth worldwide as a poultry meat producer and exporter, with 2.4 million tons of chicken meat, of which 250,000 tons were exported in 2020. Likewise, it is the fifth-largest egg consumer globally: with production across 18 provinces, the country achieved 14.06 billion eggs last year, totaling 850,000 tons.
The combined consumption of chicken meat and eggs has made poultry production the most consumed animal protein in Argentina, reaching 68 kilograms per person per year — 48.5 kilograms of chicken and 19.5 kilograms in eggs (equivalent to 306 units).
However, despite the expansion of these activities, 2020 was not an easy year, with declines in poultry meat exports and egg prices virtually frozen. Nevertheless, the sector still has significant growth potential. With the domestic market fully supplied, the focus must shift toward exports, as well as strengthening infrastructure and incorporating new technologies.
Source: avicultura.com