bred and imported sheep in Jeddah has gone up by over 50 percent with the approaching summer holidays and Ramadan, traders say. Cattle trader Awwadh Al-Rasheedi said the rise in sheep prices was due to the increased costs of barley and that breeders were facing increasingly high costs in feeding their animals. “In the end it's the consumer at the end of the line who pays the price,” he said. “Before the prices rises we dealt mostly in locally-produced sheep but now that the profit margin has become virtually zero we are turning to imported animals.” Sheep breeder Ahmad Ghazi agreed that expensive fodder was the principal cause of price rises. “Prices will inevitably rise when breeders are paying SR40 for a case of barley,” he said. “I need five cases of barley a day for my animals, as well as other types of fodder, and my daily costs in feeding the animals have risen to over SR700, which comes to over SR21,000 a month. The money coming in from the sale of sheep amounts to no more than SR20,000 a month if I sell 20 sheep. All that's putting to one side the losses from animal sickness.” Solaiman Al-Jabari, chairman of the Jeddah Chamber of Commerce and Industry's Cattle Committee, said that with no sign of barley prices falling, cattle prices are only likely to rise further. “The price of cattle in exporting countries is also going up,” he noted. “The ministries of Agriculture and Trade and Industry are calling for subsidies for imported cattle as occurs in other Gulf countries which offer SR11 per kilo in order to keep prices accessible to everyone.” Al-Jabari said there is a risk of some importers withdrawing from the market to avoid incurring further losses. “With the onset of summer and the approach of Ramadan and the Eid when the demand for sheep always goes up massively, we could see prices rise by as much as 100 percent, particularly for locally-produced animals if the number of imported animals falls,” he said.
