As Saudi Arabia intensifies its drive to localise food production, South African poultry producers and exporters are likely to be concerned by news that it intends to increase local chicken production. Saudi Arabia is one of the target markets for South African exports in terms of the poultry master plan.
The Saudi Vision 2030 aims to diversify the economy and reduce the country’s dependence on oil. As part of that plan, the government has announced new measures to encourage a rapid increase in poultry production.
The objective is to take Saudi production from the current 60% of the local market to 80% by 2025 and 100% by 2030.
That’s not going to leave much room for South African exports.
Image: A commercial crop farm covering almost 70 square kilometers of the Arabian Desert in the Al-Kharj region of Saudi Arabia. Image: NASA Earth Observatory image by Jesse Allen, using Landsat data from the U.S. Geological Survey.
