Ethiopia managed to get the ban on meat exports to the United Arab Emirates (UAE) lifted after a series of negotiations between the parties. The export gates re-opened on October 7, 2015 and meat exporters are back to their business as usual.
After the information of the meat ban reached the government, the Ministry of Agriculture, Ethiopian Meat and Diary Institute and Meat Exporters Association jointly sent a letter to the concerned authority, the Dubai municipality and met for final negotiations on Monday, October 5, 2015.
During the negotiation, the Ethiopian government indicated that the shipment that caused the problem was based on a contract concluded with the charity organisation in UAE that included a special order and that the meat was delivered to the contracted party fulfilling the order. The special order that came from the charity organisation was for the local slaughtering companies to provide chilled sheep meat immediately before the holiday of Eid ul-Adha.
The meat was exported on assumption that it would be immediately distributed as per the agreement with the charity organisation that had ordered it. But since inspection authorities at the destination figured out that the meat delivery was done without properly following international standards, the ban was imposed, Haile Selassie Weres director at the Meat and Dairy Industry Development Institute told Fortune.
“We reached agreement with the banning authority, that the local meat exporters should not enter into contractual agreements that contain special orders contravening normal practices.” Haile Selassie said.
Lifting of the ban brought relief to the seven meat processing companies which had filled the special order. These were: ELFORA Agro-Industries Plc, Luna Export Slaughter House Plc, Modjo Modern Export Abattoir Plc, Halal Food Industries Plc, HELIMEX (Hashim Ethiopian Livestock Meat Exporter), Allana and Abyssinia Export Abattoirs. Failing to maintain the freezing degree of the meat which is below zero degrees centigrade, each of the companies supplied 36 tons of sheep meat.
According to data obtained from the Ministry of Trade meat exports to UAE account for 63.1pc of the meat export volume and revenue of the country. UAE is the largest export destination to Ethiopia followed by Saudi Arabia, Viet Nam and Hong Kong that consist around 32.4pc, 2.4 per cent and 0.72 shares respectively. In the last fiscal year alone around 11.692 tons of meat was exported to UAE bringing around 58.8 million dollar foreign currency earnings to the country from the 93.2 million dollars of total meat export earnings.
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