The Poultry Association of Nigeria (PAN) has assured the public of the availability of poultry for Yuletide sales.

The Association’s National Publicity Secretary, Mr Godwin Egbebe, gave the assurance in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Tuesday in Lagos.

The scribe noted that despite the challenges faced by the sector due to high costs of raw materials for production, it would still be able to meet their potential clients’ demands at Yuletide.

“We are ready for the Yuletide sales with available poultry.

“Regardless of the fact that the costs of raw materials for production keep going up, we will still be able to produce enough for the Christmas celebration.

“Though, this will reflect in the costs of poultry sales this year,” the scribe said.

According to Egbebe “Currently, the cost of a  turkey ranges from  N55,000 to N60,000 due to the high  costs of production , while  we used sell  it  for between N30,000 and  N35,000 before.

“Personally,  I was not able to cultivate turkeys in my farm due to the high costs of raw materials.

“The current price of a chicken in the market ranges between N3,500 and N5,000 depending on its size.

“However,  local poultry are currently  more affordable than the smuggled counterparts. This is one advantage that  the exchange rate has given local production,” Egbebe said.

He said that most people were now more interested in patronising local production instead of the smuggled ones.

He implored the government to subsidise the costs of raw materials to ease production costs and boost the sector’s growth.

“We try to, as much as possible,  reduce  the costs of production so as to  sell  our birds at affordable prices  while discouraging the  patronage of smuggled poultry.

“We seek government’s intervention to subsidise the costs of production so as to discourage  the smuggling of poultry into the country,” he said.