SOL | 24 March 2017
The EU28 subsidies on its exports of poultry meat and eggs to SADC in 2016
by Jacques Berthelot (jacques.berthelot4@wanadoo.fr)
The SADC poultry producers are suffering heavily from the competition of imports given that poultry is the first agricultural sector and that per capita consumption is one of the highest in the world, at 40.3 kg, close to the US and Brazil levels of 44 kg and almost double the EU level of 22 kg in 2015. Brazil and the EU are the two main exporters although the figures differ. The SAPA (South Africa poultry association)’s figures differ in two documents: in one Brazil accounted for 50.4% of all imports in 2015 in volume against 41.7% from the EU although in another Brazil accounted for 233,787 tonnes (t) against 269,327 t for the EU . However for Eurostat EU exports were at 211,764 t in 2015 even if they jumped to 262,199 t in 2016. And, according to the Brazilian government, Brazil was the first exporter to South Africa in 2015 with a market share of 36.3% in value . But these differences might be due to the delays in reporting. If the US exports to South Africa shrunk from 31,338 t in 2011 to 16,246 t in 2014 and almost disappeared in 2015 (55 t) due to avian flu, they rebounded at 36,986 t in 2016, but were still lower than the agreement on 65,000 t of duty-free imports concluded in 2015 with the US in the context of the AGOA renewal. But the present paper focuses on the EU exports because they enter duty free on the SADC market after the EU-SADC EPA entered into provisional application in October 2016, following the already bilateral free-trade agreement between the EU and SA signed on 11 November 1999 and provisionally applied from January 2000: the Trade, Development and Cooperation Agreement (TDCA). In fact the EU exports to South Africa (SA) accounted for 99.1% of poultry exports to SADC in 2016 and 99.5% of exports of frozen cuts and offals (HS code 020714).