EFFECT OF COVID-19 PANDEMIC ON MARKET PRICE OF CHICKEN AND CHICKEN PRODUCTS IN BANGLADESH

Abstract

The study aims to investigate how the COVID/19 pandemic has impacted the price of chicken and chicken products. The current study was conducted using secondary data collected from a relevant online database of poultry news portals. Data from one year were collected of which six months were from the pre-COVID period (JulyDecember/2019)

and six months from the COVID period (July-December/2020). A structural questionnaire was prepared to collect the market price of chicken and chicken products from eight divisions of Bangladesh. To collect the data 4 days of the month were considered randomly taking a day from each week. Total (4 days x 6 months x 8 divisions) 192 days of data were collected taking 48 days each from preCOVID and COVID periods. Therefore, the plan was to collect a total of (192x2) 384

days of data for the study. The results showed that the average wholesale price of live

birds

(Broiler chicken, culled white chicken and Sonali chicken), Shell eggs (Brown and White) and Day-Old-Chicks (Brown, White layer and Broiler chicks) fluctuated due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but no significant (p>0.05) difference was found in prices except live culled red chicken. The average wholesale price of culled red chicken in Chattogram was 171.12±19.67 from July to December 2019 and 195.34±35.70 from July to December 2020. In Khulna and Rajshahi the wholesale price of brown shell eggs decreased whereas in Dhaka, Barishal and Chattogram the price was upward, but it remained unchanged in Mymensingh, Sylhet and Rangpur during the COVID pandemic. The wholesale price of white shell eggs in Dhaka, Khulna and Rajshahi showed decreasing trend during the pandemic but increased in Chattogram. The wholesale price of white layer chicks was lowered by 21.43Tk, 23.79Tk and 31.03Tk in the COVID period than the pre-COVID period in Dhaka, Barishal and Rangpur, whereas minor price fluctuation was observed in brown layer and broiler chicks. The wholesale price of Sonali chicks was 15.67±3.50 in Rangpur during the pandemic. The study concluded that the COVID-19 pandemic had a negative impact on the poultry industry.