Russia slashes poultry import quota

Deputy Prime Minister Victor Zubkov has announced that Russia is to significantly cut its poultry import quota next year, to 350,000 metric tonnes. This is 50% less than this year and about 40% less than originally planned.

The government in December 2009 said quotas would drop to 600,000 tonnes in 2011 and 550,000 tonnes in 2012. The new level is in line with the industry’s expectations and will mostly go to the US, said Dmitry Rylko, director of the Institute for Agriculture Market Studies in Moscow.

Russia introduced import quotas in 2003 to help domestic producers. Russia has been steadily reducing the import quota in a bid to protect the rising domestic output of chicken meat, although imports tended to come in at a lower price.

Andrei Lisitsyn, director of the Gorbatov Meat Research Institute, did not find the sharp reduction in poultry imports alarming, stating that there was a surplus of poultry in the country.

Poultry production rose 13% in the first nine months of 2010, bringing total output to 2.9 million tonnes, Meat Union president Musheg Mamikonyan said last week.