The price of chicken rose 6 percent year-on-year in January as compared with the same period a year ago. “The price of chicken has increased significantly over the past year. There are a few reasons for this increase, but it shows that different countries have scaled down on production so the stock levels are low.

This pushes the price up a bit. The other reason is that the avian flu in Europe has led to a decrease in supply of the chicken meat,” said Paul Makube, a senior agricultural economist at FNB.

However, Makube said chicken still remained the cheapest meat available.

Wandile Sihlobo, the head of economic agribusiness and intelligence at Agbiz, said it depended on the chicken portions because they were not priced the same by the retailers.

“The price of chicken has gone up to R43.69kg,” he said.

BUSINESS REPORT