By Rawa Abdullah ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – The poultry industry is thriving in the Kurdistan Region despite the financial crisis and low prices, according to figures from the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) ministry of agriculture. There were 1,115 poultry farms in the Kurdistan Region in 2013, producing 65,000 tons of chicken, according to figures released by the ministry of agriculture and water resources. By 2017 that figure had risen to 1,389 farms, producing 108,000 tons. According to the same figures, egg producers have also grown. There were eight farms producing edible eggs in the Kurdistan Region in 2013, accounting for 569,671 eggs annually. Last year, the number of these projects increased to 11, producing 1.5 billion eggs in a year. “Despite the financial crisis, during the past four years, there were 274 projects raising poultry, three projects producing edible eggs, four projects to raise chicks, 17 projects to hatch eggs, and 11 projects for fodder in the Kurdistan Region,” Ramazan Mohammed, an official from the KRG ministry of agriculture, told Rudaw. “That is why poultry meat products have increased by 40 percent. This is in addition to the establishment of 300 unlicensed projects to raise poultry,” he added. “In order to further develop this sector, the government should put a limit to the import of meat. According to our studies, nearly 30 percent of the projects have stopped working because they are unable to sell their product. Most of these projects therefore export their products to other cities in Iraq. This is while millions of dollars are being spent annually to import chicken and eggs.” These poultry projects produce 166,000 tons of meat. However, the Kurdistan Region consumes 138,000 tons of chicken meat per year. The Region could technically sustain its own demand. “Neighboring countries export the product for a cheaper price systematically to [undermine] Kurdistan projects,” Ramazan said. Agriculture ministry’s data shows that Sulaimani leads other provinces in the rise in poultry projects, at 518. Of the 274 projects built during the economic crisis, 124 were in the province of Sulaimani. Taha Ahmed Mohammed opened a poultry project in Piramagrun last year. “We sell most of our product in Iraqi cities. We won’t have problems selling our product if the roads are open and there is no political tension between Iraq and the Kurdistan Region, otherwise we will have sale problems because of the abundance of chicken and low prices of imported chickens in Kurdistan,” he said. According to figures released by Iraq’s ministry of planning, the population of Iraq reached 37,139,519 last year. If we take the KRG agriculture ministry’s measurement of the annual demand for chicken per person, which is 23.9 kilos, Iraq’s chicken meat demand annually reaches 887,634 tons. If all roads are reopened between the Kurdistan Region and Iraqi cities, the poultry industry is projected to produce three times its current output. So long as Iraq maintains its current level of imports, Kurdish producers should have no problem selling their products. “The poultry industry has developed very well in the Kurdistan Region because of rising demand for meat, a rising population in Iraq and the Kurdistan Region, other sectors struggling, and facilitations to build poultry farms,” said Dr Salah Mustafa, head of the organization for the development of the poultry industry in the Kurdistan Region and CEO of Vano Group for poultry. If the KRG had a long-term plan for the development of the poultry industry, and limited poultry imports, and sales were made better in coordination with Iraq, the financial crisis would not have had that much of an effect on the Kurdistan Region, he added. This way, poultry projects would have doubled, creating job opportunities for thousands of people and lowering the unemployment rate, Mustafa said. Cash would not be spent on poultry imports and profit would have been made by selling the poultry to other Iraqi cities, he added.
