Quotations for most Brazilian chicken products surveyed by Cepea decreased between March and April, reflecting lower demand for the product.

In the wholesale market of the Greater São Paulo (SP), whole frozen chicken devalued 2.8% between March and April, averaging BRL 6.56/kg last month. For the chilled product, prices dropped 2%, to BRL 6.59/kg, on average, in April.

In Toledo (PR), the prices for the frozen meat decreased 9.7%, from BRL 9.49/kg in March to BRL 8.57/kg in April. For chilled chicken, quotations dropped a steep 11.2%, averaging BRL 8.62/kg in April.

According to Cepea collaborators, chicken meat sales were weak in April. Thus, agents decided to lower asks in order to ensure higher liquidity and prevent stocks from building up. One of the factors that may have increased pressure on chicken meat prices was the loss of competitiveness of this product against pork meat, which devalued more steeply than chicken meat between March and April.

In April, Brazil exported 408.3 thousand tons of chicken meat (in natura), 15.7% less than the volume shipped in March, according to data from Secex compiled by Cepea.

Despite this result, the daily average of shipments in April was the highest in the series, which began in 1997, totaling 22.7 thousand tons. This highlights that the exports performance in April was not higher than that only because of the lower number of working days compared to that in March.

(BRL 1 = USD 0.20)