Crisis in Livestock Inputs Market: Order Registration and Currency Allocation Issues
Mr. Mohsen Hafez, President of the Livestock and Poultry Input Distributors Association
In the early months of the year, the golden time for placing orders and securing livestock inputs was missed. This is despite the fact that the Ministry of Agriculture’s Deputy Commerce Department had temporarily suspended the order registration process due to limited foreign exchange resources. As a result, the market is now facing a severe shortage of grains, especially barley and corn. This is an issue that private sector organizations had warned about many times before.
On the other hand, the country’s livestock farmers have been facing a shortage of barley in recent months and to compensate for it, they replaced part of their needs with corn; but it didn’t take long for corn stocks to decrease and the crisis entered a new phase.
In addition, since the beginning of the year, rumors about the allocation of foreign exchange in a mixed form were raised, which caused distrust in the market and the cessation of some commercial activities. However, after observing the consequences of this situation, the government decided to continue the process of allocating foreign exchange at 28,500 Tomans until the end of the year.
Therefore, these interruptions and confusions caused the time gap between market demand and supply of goods, causing producers to experience shortages and double pressure.
