Malawi hunts stake in K100tn meat market
Malawi Investment and Trade Centre (Mitc) has tasked the United Arab Emirates (UAE) based Halal Trade and Marketing Centre (HTMC) to facilitate halal certification to enabling local businesses to supply meat products to the gulf nations.
Meat products are in high demand in Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and UAE.
The gulf market has a combined market value for food and beverages estimated at $60 billion (about K102 trillion), according to Mitc.
Mitc acting director of trade promotion, development and facilitation Lovemore Ndege said this in his presentation during a resilient and nutrition friendly agriculture meeting in Lilongwe on Wednesday.
The presentation at the Civil Society Agriculture Network (CisaNet) organised meeting was titled: Navigating Agriculture Trade in Malawi: Unveiling Opportunities and Overcoming Challenges.
Ndege said: “Mitc is collaborating with HTMC to facilitate halal certification of local abattoirs to Gulf Cooperation Council [GCC].
“The halal certification will enable local exporters to meet export requirements of GCC countries.”
The HTMC is a global business development centre focused on economic opportunities for halal products and services. Halal refersto products prepared in line with the Muslim law.
Ndege said the GCC countries are among the largest importers of halal food and beverage products worldwide, with a total population of about 57 million inhabitants.
To secure the markets there, he said HTMC will “provide tailor-made consultancy services aimed at providing Malawian slaughterhouses with a better understanding of halal regulation in the GCC for meat products such as poultry, beef and lamb”.
CisaNet programmes officer Maziko Nkhulembe said the deal, once struck, would ensure that the country is reaping more from its exports.
“Our current struggles are that we are unable to access high value markets. As a result, you find that we are informally accessing those markets through other players within the region. They import commodities from Malawi and brand them as originating from their local economies,” he said.
The local companies earmarked for the exports are Central Poultry/Go Fresh, CK Cold Storage, Ekhaya Farm Foods and Shire Valley Abattoir, according to Ndege.
