TACLOBAN CITY – The province of Leyte was the top chicken producer in Eastern Visayas for the fourth quarter of 2018, a report from the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA–8) said.
Wilma Perante, PSA regional director, told Leyte Samar Daily Express in an interview that among the six provinces of the region, Leyte recorded the highest chicken population at 894,477 birds which comprised more than one third or 35.4 percent of the total chicken population in the region.
Samar ranked second with 693,208 birds accounting for 27.5 percent of the region’s total chicken inventory. Eastern Samar, meanwhile, registered the lowest inventory of chicken with 4.7 percent share or 117,668 birds.
Perante reported that the chicken industry in Eastern Visayas posted 20.0 percent increase in production during the fourth quarter of 2018.
Based on the preliminary data, the total chicken production in the region went up to 15,602 metric tons (MT) in the 4th quarter of 2018 from 13,006 MT in the same quarter of 2017.
“Eastern Visayas accounted for 3.1 percent of the country’s total chicken production during the 4th quarter of 2018. It ranked eighth among the regions with low chicken production in the country,” Perante said.
Meanwhile, chicken inventory showed that chicken population here in the region as of 1 January 2019 stood at 2,524,559 birds or an increase of 2.5 percent from its 2,463,777 inventory on 1 January 2018.
(RESTITUTO A. CAYUBIT)
