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By Dominique Patton
BEIJING, Jan 18 (Reuters) - China's pork output posted a sharp recovery last year after the sector was decimated by an incurable hog disease in 2019, official data showed on Monday.
China's 2020 pork output fell 3.3% from a year earlier to 41.13 million tonnes after plunging 21% in 2019, the National Bureau of Statistics said.
But some analysts said they had expected a much bigger fall in 2020 after the African swine fever ravaged China's breeding stock in 2019. China's stock had fallen by an estimated 60% by mid-2019 after the disease hit China in mid-2018.
The reading is "quite high, higher than I expected. In November, we probably expected a 10-15% decline," said Pan Chenjun, senior analyst at Rabobank.
Xiao Lin, analyst at Shenzhen-based Win & Fun Investment also said she had expected a bigger decline of between 5% and 10% in 2020 output.
Strong policy support and incentives helped revive the sector by unleashing more than 200 billion yuan ($30.87 billion) in investment.
China slaughtered 527.04 million hogs in 2020, the data showed, down 3.2% from the same period a year earlier.
Output in the final quarter of 2020 jumped to 13 million tonnes, according to Reuters calculations based on the data. That is up 21% from the 10.74 million tonnes produced in the same quarter a year ago and higher than 8.4 million tonnes in the third quarter.
Despite the jump in output, pork prices <PORK-CN-TOT-D> have risen significantly from the end of November, reaching 47 yuan per kilogramme last week, almost level with a year ago.
"That's the signal that there's a very big shortage," said Pan, adding that demand had not increased significantly.
The data also showed China's pig herd rose to 406.5 million heads at the end of December, from 370.39 million at the end of September.
Beef and lamb output rose slightly in 2020, by 0.8% and 1% respectively, the data showed, while poultry output grew by 5.5%.
($1 = 6.4795 Chinese yuan)
(Reporting by Dominique Patton; Editing by Himani Sarkar and Ana Nicolaci da Costa)
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The Link LonkJanuary 18, 2021 at 11:38AM
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UPDATE 2-Chinese pork output recovers sharply in 2020, beating expectations - Successful Farming
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