India’s poultry industry, hurt by record-high prices of maize due to its increased diversion for ethanol production, has sought permission to import the commodity at zero duty under open general licence (OGL).
A section of the industry has also demanded that the government should supply rice at concessional rates to make up for the shortage of maize.
"The increase in maize prices to the tune of 18% per year is much higher than the average rate of inflation and cannot be passed on to the consumers in sale of chicken and eggs," the Poultry Federation of India (PFI) said in a letter to the ministry of animal husbandry dated July 11.
The government has allowed import of about 5 lakh tonnes of maize under tariff rate quota (TRQ) at 15% import duty through state government agencies. CLFMA of India, an association of the livestock industry, has approached the government requesting it to allow the TRQ import at zero duty. However, the industry has pointed out that import through state agencies would not just take longer but would be expensive due to the 15% duty.
India does not allow use of genetically modified (GM) maize, although availability of non-GMO maize is limited. It is available in Ukraine, Myanmar and some African countries like Nigeria.
India has been incentivising diversion of maize for ethanol, which attracts the highest price of Rs 71.86/litre among ethanol derived from different types of feed stocks. However, according to the third advance estimate, India produced 35.67 million tonnes of maize in 2023-24 as compared with 38.08 million tonnes in 2022-23.
The poultry industry is the biggest user of maize, accounting for nearly 18 million tonnes, followed by other sectors like starch, food etc.
"There are various factors supporting the increase in maize prices,” said KG Anand, general manager, Venkys India. “It being the off season, most of the maize is in the hands of the traders. We have many new ethanol plants which are using maize on a large scale. The minimum support price of maize has also been increased by 6.45%.”
Many poultry companies told ET that maize is not available in the market even at the record-high rates of Rs 28-29/kg. “Yesterday, we could get only 500 tonnes of maize at Rs 29/kg, when our requirement was of a thousand tonnes,” said the marketing head of a Pune-based poultry company having a turnover of more than Rs 2,000 crore.
A section of the poultry industry wants the government to allocate some quantity of rice from stocks of the Food Corporation of India (FCI) at subsidised rates ..
Some import of maize has been taking place to ports in Tamil Nadu from Myanmar under the least developed country category. “However, the supplies in Myanmar are limited and we are facing port congestion,” said Anand of Venkys.
Source Name : Economic Times