Botswana beef heads to China

Pauline Dikuelo | Friday July 31, 2020 13:55

 

Botswana beef heads to China

On Wednesday, the Commission’s spokesperson, Brian Dioka said a Chinese delegation had been in the country to assess the country’s readiness to start exports.

“We are very close to completing the process and the groundwork has been done,” he said.

“We are currently drafting a trade agreement which was requested by the Chinese and we will send it to them,” he said.

Currently about 9,000 tonnes of BMC’s beef exports are sold in the lucrative European Union (EU) market annually, of which 1,600 tonnes is sent to Norway under a quota arrangement.

The second most important BMC market after the EU, is South Africa where the parastatal exports 14,000 tonnes of beef exports annually.

Other markets are Angola, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Mozambique, Hong Kong, Thailand, Kuwait and Ghana.

“China has opted to take the bulk of the beef exports we send to the South African market,” Dioka revealed.

“The Chinese market is also lucrative as they also want both red and green offals such as tripe to mention a few.

“We have only been selling offals locally.”

With one-fifth of the world’s population, China is the largest global market for fresh meat. From a global perspective, China is the 33rd largest importer of beef and veal products. In recent years, China increased its beef and beef product imports by more than half a million metric tonnes.

A few years ago, BMC secured supply to the Vietnam market, where it is sending 50 tonnes (2 containers per week). The Chinese deal is expected to boost the BMC’s coffers, as the parastatal over the years BMC has survived only through government support, piling on hundreds of millions of pula in loans in the process.