Eggs forum calls on poultry farmers for national initiative

The Ministry of Municipality and Environment’s (MME) Animal Wealth Department in co-operation with Qatar Development Bank (QDB) conducted the 2nd forum on the national initiative to localise the table eggs projects at the Qatari farms. The initiative was jointly announced in March by the MME and QDB.Ahmed Abdullah al-Mulla, head of the Farms and Complexes Section at the department, Issa al-Ansari, finance director at the Services Department at QDB, and a number of farm owners attended. Al-Mulla stressed that this forum focuses on the companies that have experience in supervising farms and poultry departments, which requires mastering three main factors: biological safety, benefiting from the available resources and use of modern technology in eggs production. He said that two Qatari companies compliant with the set standards have been contacted to provide the necessary technical supervision work to the participating farms. Financial support will be provided by QDB and guidance and advice on the issue will be provided by the MME specialists. The initiative aims at arriving at 65% self-sufficiency in egg production in the country. Meanwhile, al-Ansari pointed out that QDB finances up to 70% of the value of the fixed assets of such projects, which include the equipment, machinery and all other assets. The farmers will be given adequate grace period before starting the repayment based on the feasibility study submitted by the investor. The forum introduced the participating farm owners to all the necessary technical and health conditions and standards to go on with such projects in addition to the opportunities provided by QDB to get easy loans. To qualify for applying for such projects the applicant should be a Qatari national and own a registered farm in the country with a clean record free of any violations. Besides, the proposed place for the project should be suitable. The deadline of application is August 26 at the headquarters of the Animal Wealth Department.