Fuelled by burgeoning demand for broiler meat and eggs, the poultry industry in the country has finally attained the momentum to cross the Rs 1-lakh-crore mark soon.

Business chamber Assocham has pegged the market size for the poultry products at Rs 1.32 lakh crore by 2015 against the current size of Rs 49,000 crore.

The Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India (Assocham), which came out with the study ‘Trends in Domestic Poultry Segment' on Thursday, said that the market had been growing 20 per cent annually.

Broiler meat and table eggs accounted for most of the domestic poultry market.

India was the third largest egg producer and fourth largest broiler meat producer in the world.

It produced 3 million tonnes of broiler meat and about 2.86 million tonnes of eggs annually, the Assocham study said.

FDI

The study observed that there was a huge opportunity for foreign direct investment (FDI) in the poultry sector in areas like breeding, medication, feedstock, vertical integration and processing.

Lack of infrastructure like power and transportation, however, posed major challenges, it said.

“Driven by rising purchasing power, changing food habits, contract poultry farming and rapid urbanisation are certain key reasons for this constant upswing in this niche poultry sector,” Mr D S Rawat, Secretary-General of Assocham, said, commenting on the study.

The industry employed two crore farmers backed by 1,000 hatcheries across the country.

Bird flu outbreak

“But sporadic bird flu outbreaks in different parts of the country along with lack of storage and processing facilities and rising prices of feed stocks including soy meal and maize have severely hit the poultry exports,” the study said.

Maize accounted for over half of the total production cost of poultry feed and the poultry sector consumes over 50 per cent of total maize production in the country.

Southern India had led the poultry industry, followed by Maharashtra in the West and Haryana and Punjab in the North.

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