Belize Poultry Association Concerned about Price Gouging

Now poultry is not exported, and it is estimated that one hundred and four pounds of chickens are consumed per capita annually. The Belize Poultry Association Manager, Armando Cowo, says that the adjustment should not be used as an opportunity to price gouge. This, he says, occurred during the last adjustment when the cost per pound of chicken went up by eight cents. 

Armando Cowo

Armando Cowo, Belize Poultry Association

“Even though we are doing the adjustment, let us not try be gouged by other people out there who are intermediaries in the process, who buy bulk and then sell it to you on the retail level and then you in turn sell it to your consumer at a higher level. If the price of chicken goes up by ten cents a pound; when you sell a plate of rice and beans, you don’t sell a pound of chicken on that plate of rice and beans. So don’t use that as an excuse to say well I ker up the price because the price of chicken gone up. We heard that before with the last increase that we did and hoping that things would have gotten better and we would have been able to readjust the price downwards and now we are faced with an upward adjustment. But we are asking our people out there who consume the product to be patient with us. It is not something that we intentionally are doing or trying to gouge more money out of your pocket, rather what we are trying to do is save the industry.”