| BMC INCREASES PRIME BEEF TICKET |
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| Friday,July 18,2008 Posted: 17:15 BJT(0915 GMT) |
| From:voice Article type:Original |
Botswana Meat Commission’s chief executive officer, Dr. Motshudi Raborokgwe, has revealed that as part of its regional export parity pricing (epp) the prime beef for the European Union (EU) export market went up by P2 effective July 1, 2008.
Addressing farmers in Gaborone last week, Raborokgwe said only beef cattle qualifying for this P2.00 premium condition should have a cold dressed mass (cdm) of at least 200 kg.
“The increase to P2 is necessary due to beef prices in Europe, and EU in particular, that have steadily risen since Jan 2008 by 40% to 50%. This was also due to major exporters like Brazil & Argentina not exporting. For instance, Brazil’s exports were limited due to traceability issues, at a time when production in Europe is decreasing,” he said.
The BMC Chief further pointed out that the quota will be applied 21 days before delivery and producers paid on basis of delivery of a minimum of 90% of pledged animals and a maximum of 10% over pledged numbers.
“All delivered animals will count to make up the pledge even if they do not qualify for the incentive. For a quota of less than 50 animals, producers will nominate a delivery date while for that over 50 animals, producers will nominate delivery week and BMC will set delivery date within that week. Producers must deliver within one day either side of agreed date to qualify for incentive.”
He said the hope was that the premium would encourage feeders to buy cattle for fattening in conjunction with existing BMC feed-lotting schemes and encourage them to sell during the traditionally low through-put period. These are the Large Scale Feedlot advance Scheme where BMC advances feedlots up to P2000 per animal bought and an additional P1600 per animal for a farmer to buy feed repayable at 6% below prime.
The objective is to make farmers in Botswana realise more profit and net value for their cattle sold to South Africa after the deduction of transport, insurance, levies and marketing cost. The regional market includes South Africa, Botswana, Namibia and Swaziland.
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