ECONOMYNEXT – Sri Lanka’s poultry meat prices moved up in the third quarter of 2025, as poor quality feed from local maize reduced the average weight of broiler chicken in the overall market, a top poultry producer said.
From June to September 2025, prices moved up, Bairaha Farms told shareholders.
“During this period, the industry also witnessed a gradual reduction in day-old chick and live bird output due to several factors, including lower average weights in broiler birds arising from feed quality issues in using poor quality of locally sourced maize, as well as a reduction in parent stock placements,” the firm told shareholders.
“These developments contributed to a tightening of supply, supporting the upward movement in prices.
Bairaha Farms had recorded a net profit of 427 million rupees for the September quarter against a loss of 109 million rupees last year, interim accounts showed.
But its feed milling operation had been hit by high-priced, low-quality maize.
“Despite the improved market environment, the industry continued to face challenges in feed quality,” the firm said.
“Although imports of maize were permitted during the quarter, the locally purchased maize of inferior quality and procured at higher prices had to be utilized first.
“These circumstances adversely affected profitability of the feed milling operation.”
Especially in the last two decades, Sri Lanka’s poultry firms have struggled feed the people with protein amid food trade controls, licensing and taxes on grain.
Analysts had said that Sri Lanka’s self-sufficiency or autarky on maize, not only malnourishes chicken but due to overall high protein and dairy product prices which pushes up the cost of proteins children are also malnourished.
Industry insiders who are familiar with maize ‘self-sufficiency’ say it is a trail of corruption that dates back to the 1990s with collusion of a regional politician with a collector who was blacklisted by a feed milling form for attempting to push up the prices of grain and rice polish.
Import controls gradually intensified with the involvement of national level politicians, who helped control imports, they say.
Children not only face high protein prices but also basic calories due to controls on basic foods due to an autarky on rice.
In Sri Lanka a rice autarky is maintained with import licensing and taxes of 65 rupees a kilogram (about 220 dollars a tonne) to keep prices about than 50 percent above the rest of South Asia with retail prices of parboiled rice (nadu) reaching some East Asian jasmine rice grades. (Colombo/Oct27/2025)
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