Algeria dairies halt work over cut in powdered milk imports
Posted by Zawya
Magharebia.com
22 June 2010


The production of packaged milk has suffered since Algerian authorities slashed powdered milk quotas.

Ten dairies have stopped working to protest authorities' decision to halve imported powdered milk quotas for some producers, according to the Algerian newspaper El Watan.

As a result, some regions are experiencing a shortage of packaged milk, according to consumers contacted by Magharebia.

"For now, I'm managing to get a hold of milk in pouches, but if this situation continues, I'm worried we'll be back to the crisis of three years ago," one mother of two young children, who lives east of Algiers, said on Monday (June 21st).

Agriculture Minister Rachid Benaissa last Thursday called an emergency meeting between officials and dairy industry representatives to head off a crisis like that of 2007, during which powdered milk prices rose 40% on the international market, causing domestic prices to soar.

"The milk market is stable and the state has the means to ensure that supplies are maintained," he said. "Those who think they can achieve anything by threats, provocation and taking an entire region hostage are wrong." He added that the quota reductions have not yet been implemented.

"The disruption we've seen over the past few months in the distribution of milk in pouches was brought about by unwarranted pressure from private producers," Trade Minister Mustapha Benbada said on June 16th in Algiers.

"The National Inter-professional Office for Milk (ONIL) has sufficient quantities of powdered milk. So the shortage of this product is just a result of unwarranted pressure from private producers who are resistant to change," he added.

Milk production units will work for "two or even three eight-hour shifts a day, if necessary" to minimise the impact on the dairy market, Benbada said.

A number of regions in the centre of the country have experienced a milk shortage due to the dairies' strike. But dairy workers are unhappy about restrictions on the supply of powdered milk.

"The formula used by the Inter-professional Milk Committee (CIL) to distribute quotas is doing us a lot of damage. The reduction in these quotas is only affecting private dairies, and this is already starting to affect the market," said an official from the Monlait Dairy.

"The limits on the quotas are bound to have an effect across society. We're already thinking about reducing staffing levels if this continues," said a manager at the Betouche Dairy, adding that this group of dairy processors is only producing a million litres a day, or a fifth of its capacity.

ONIL imported only 120,000 tonnes of milk in 2009, a drop in 25,000 tonnes from 2008. The limited amounts of available powdered milk have left dairy producers scrambling.

"The problem lies in the distribution levels of this wretched milk powder," Youcef Hamidouni, a dairy processor from Boumerdes, told Magharebia. "ONIL allocates a certain quantity of powder for manufacturing 300,000 litres of milk to processors in Algiers and a quantity of 5,000 for the other regions across the country. This is where the conflict arises. The other processors are demanding fair treatment."

Maiche Said, a dairy products distributor living in Draa Ben Khedda, said his biggest problem is public processor ONALAIT.

"ONALAIT managers say they don't have enough powder to process the quantity I take to them, and I'm left with the milk to get rid of. I can't carry on like this," he told Magharebia.

"There's no dialogue going on within the inter-professional committee, and we can't understand on what basis they're carrying out this reduction in powdered milk quotas," dairy owner Djaouad Rabhi told Magharebia.

"I have no problems," said Ali Berrah, who owns 10 dairy cows in Makouda in Kabylie. "I've got a contract with a distributor who comes for the milk every morning. I've heard there's a milk crisis, but whatever's going on isn't affecting me, or the other farmers I know."

By Adem Amine for Magharebia in Algiers

© Magharebia.com 2010

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