KAMPALA, UGANDA: The Uganda Poultry Farmers Association on Tuesday petitioned the Ministry of East Africa Community Affairs imploring it to intervene in the prolonged ban on importation of eggs by neighboring Kenya.
They delivered the petition to Rebecca Kadaga, the 1st Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of the East Africa Community Affairs seeking government’s intervention to engage Kenya to lift the ban on importation of poultry products.
Kenyan authorities this year levied restrictions on the importation of poultry products from Uganda with an aim to protect her internal market interest following the prolonged impact of Covid-19 pandemic.
Speaking to URN, Martin Roy Lukwago, an official of the association, also a poultry farmer said the implementation of the ban has affected over 50,000 farmers and traders within the poultry business value chain and supply.
Emmanuel Nsabimana, another farmer wonders why the Kenyan government is implementing such a harsh ban yet they equally rely on markets in Uganda to sell their products such as chicks, lime, trays, poultry equipment and drugs among others.
Hu Deyle of SR Afro Chick Breeders, one of the biggest players in the poultry business in Uganda and East Africa says they produce between 27,000 to 30,000 trays of eggs every day that cannot be exported to Kenya following the ban.
After receiving the petition, Kadaga revealed that cabinet on Monday deliberated and recommended retaliatory intervention to counter Kenya’s ban on Ugandan poultry products. She divulged that the Ministry of Agriculture, Animal Industry and Fisheries will soon pronounce itself on the matter.
Uganda’s per egg consumption capita is 17 eggs per person per year, while the country exports more to Kenya, where the capita in Kenya is 55-60 eggs per person annually. Currently, Uganda produces 150,000 trays of eggs per day out of which 70 percent are exported to Kenya.
Kenya has since 2019 locked horns with Uganda over the ban on Ugandan sugar and milk, maize, a breach of the Custom Union Protocol that established the East Africa Community single market, leading to a rise in the non-tariff barriers.
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