The Bureau of Customs (BoC) has lifted the prohibition imposed on the shipment of imported chickens and other poultry products, thus allowing these products to enter Philippine ports later this month until January 2010 in time for the Yuletide season.

In an interview, BoC Commissioner Napoleon Morales said the importation of millions of kilos of chickens has been allowed as a result of the shortage of this poultry product in the local market during holidays.

“The first shipment of chicken goods will arrive on November 30 onwards but it will not go beyond January 31 next year. There will be 8 million kilos that are expected to come in during this period,” he stressed.

Before year-end, local consumers are normally face with the growing shortage of the product in the market because of higher demand triggered by the Christmas season.

“We will only have minimal revenue from this, maybe just in the hundreds of thousands of pesos,” Morales said, adding that they will only get additional revenues from the Special Safeguard duty that will be imposed to all the imported products.

Morales said he is leaving the issuance of import permits to the Department of Agriculture (DA) to regulate the importation of chickens to prevent a surplus of the products in the market.

In a letter of Agriculture Secretary Arthur C. Yap dated September 29, BoC was told that poultry raisers had difficulties in their production in the third quarter, exacerbated by the effects of cyclones “Ondoy” and “Pepeng.”

“We may experience tightness in the supply of poultry meat, resulting in an increase in poultry meat prices in the domestic marketing in the coming holiday season,” Yap said.

He initially asked for the importation of five million kilos but it was followed by an additional three million kilos due to the reported “tightness of supply of poultry meat,” which he said is expected to persist even up to early next year.