KUCHING, Nov 11: A disequilibrium in supply and demand is affecting the prices of chicken in Malaysia as the markets are still adjusting to the reopening of the economy.
Minister of Domestic Trade and Consumer Affairs Dato Sri Alexander Nanta Linggi explained that poultry prices, especially for chicken, are also influenced by other factors such as input costs.
“Chicken feed like soya bean and corn are imported and thus influenced by foreign exchange rates as well as global market prices.
“KPDNHEP (Ministry of Domestic Trade and Consumer Affairs) is proactively carrying out discussions continuously with the Ministry of Agriculture and Food Industry (MAFI) to stabilise chicken prices so as to not burden producers and consumers,” he told Parliament today.
Nanta was responding to Rusnah Aluai (Tangga Batu) who asked about the Ministry’s efforts and plans to lower the retail price of chicken considering that the current pricing was quite unreasonable and could burden the people.
He informed that KPDNHEP is currently looking into all factors to find the best solution without affecting the interest of business and consumers.
Following engagement sessions with stakeholders including poultry farmers, he said that the government is examining the proposals put forward, including soft loan facilities for this group to help with the cost of business operations as well as to stabilise the price of chicken in the market.
“Inspection and monitoring is being conducted by over 1,000 price monitoring officers and 2,200 enforcement officers at the supplier and retailer level so that there are no price profiteering activities and businesses are carried out ethically throughout the country.
“Notification letters on Goods Information Verification under Section 21 of the Price Control and Anti-Profiteering Act 2011 have been issued to poultry producers and wholesalers to obtain detailed information on the increase in poultry prices at the retail level.
“Notification letters are also issued to every level of the supply chain including breeders as a soft-approach to review their prices and purchase costs to obtain a more reasonable profit margin,” he explained.
Apart from that, Nanta added that inspections were also conducted on traders to provide documentation proofs on the operating costs of business.
A Special Task Force was also established to address the issue of increasing chicken prices in the market directly. — DayakDaily
