JEDDAH, 17 November — A shortage of supply and an ever-increasing big demand has sent meat prices in the Kingdom soaring.
Market observers attribute the shortage in supply to the ban imposed by the Ministry of Agriculture and Water on the importation of sheep. Traders say that sheep prices have reached SR600 per head because of the extreme shortage in supply.
A Commerce Ministry official told Al-Watan newspaper that the market will face further shortages in red meat at the beginning of Ramadan.
The ministry had requested importers to supply adequate amount of red meat and itself released 198 containers of frozen meat from Australia. However, this is unlikely to be enough to meet high demand during Ramadan.
The ministry issued its orders to release the shipments of Australian and New Zealander consignments of goat meat, beef and poultry products, which were impounded at the Jeddah Islamic Port last September following Saudi importers’ collective request for the release of the commodity, worth SR10 million.
The meat was not allowed to enter the Kingdom because it contained spinal cord residue that can carry the virus that causes mad-cow disease. Suleiman Al-Balawi, a representative of meat businessmen in the Kingdom, said the ministry took an undertaking from the importers to the effect that they would not import meat containing spinal cord residues again.
A number of countries, including Australia, New Zealand, the UAE and India, are trying to take full advantage of the lack of supply to Saudi Arabia’s beef market, estimated to be worth SR1.5 billion a year.
This is in the wake of Riyadh’s decision to ban all beef imports from Europe as a result of the outbreak of Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy and Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease.
Saudi Arabia imports about two-thirds of its beef for local consumption, put at 100,000 tons in 1999. It also imports 11 million tons of poultry meat and poultry meat products annually from many countries including the Netherlands, France and Brazil.
