Kurdistan Region Agriculture Minister Protests Postponement of Import Tax on Chicken and Eggs

According to KurdPress, Bigard Talabani, Minister of Agriculture and Water Resources of the Kurdistan Region, sent two letters of protest to Iraqi Prime Minister Ali Faleh Zaidi in protest of the Iraqi Prime Minister’s decision to postpone the collection of taxes and customs duties on imported eggs and chickens, and called for an immediate review of this decision.

Stressing the need to support domestic production, Talabani announced that the Kurdistan Region’s poultry sector has reached a stage of self-sufficiency and surplus production as a result of agricultural programs. According to the statistics provided by him, 59 projects producing more than 4,000 eggs annually are producing 4,000 eggs per year.They produce 8 billion eggs, while the region's domestic need is about 1.8 billion eggs.

Also, more than 2,100 broiler chicken breeding projects produce more than 450,000 tons of chicken annually, while the region's need is stated to be about 150,000 tons. The Minister of Agriculture of the region said that these statistics show that domestic production not only meets the needs of the region, but also has the capacity to meet the needs of all of Iraq.

According to him, the elimination of taxes on imported products has put pressure on the domestic production market, causing heavy financial losses to the poultry sector and putting tens of thousands of job opportunities at risk. In his two protest letters, Talabani called on the federal government to support animal and poultry feed suppliers and poultry farms instead of implementing this decision and to facilitate the easy transfer of the Kurdistan Region's surplus production to all provinces of Iraq.Earlier, the Iraqi Prime Minister's Office announced that Ali Faleh Zaidi had ordered the suspension of taxes and customs duties on imported eggs, poultry, and live animal meat.