In the past two years, pig enterprises have had a very hard time, due to the low price of pigs, many pig companies have suffered heavy losses. But just then, an accident happened. On January 20, the General Administration of Customs issued an announcement stating that from now on, the import of Russian pork products that meet the relevant requirements will be allowed. Combined with the Belgian pork that lifted the ban on January 12, shortly after the beginning of this year, China's pork imports increased by two. After seeing this news, many people will be surprised, why do we want to open up imports from these two countries because our country's pork is now in oversupply?
In fact, there are two very important reasons behind this, first of all, this is to pave the way for us to increase monetary policy easing and further release water. Judging from the recent policies, it is a sure thing that we will increase the intensity of water release this year. Also on January 20, the central bank unexpectedly announced that it would cut the bank reserve requirement ratio by 05 percentage points, providing liquidity to the market by 1 trillion yuan. You must know that the two RRR cuts in March and September last year were both 025 percentage points. This year, not only is the RRR still cut, but it is also 05 percentage points, which can be seen that this year's RRR cut is larger than last year.
Since it has been decided to release water, it must be to suppress the CPI within a controllable range, so as not to limit the space for our policies to give full play. So at this time, the list borne by the pig is heavy, and it bears the glorious mission of reducing CPI. In fact, from a historical point of view, whenever the relevant departments have the idea of suppressing inflation or releasing water, they will release some pork imports, and in this way, the pork will be quickly suppressed, and then the CPI will be lowered. After all, pork is a relatively heavy part of our CPI composition. And we are in this situation right now, so it is logical to open up pork imports from both countries.
What is another important reason? It is our country that wants to support Russia in this way. A few days ago, the problem of swine fever in Russia was not solved at all, even at the end of last year, in November and December, Russia still continued to break out cases. This is in stark contrast to Belgium. In this case, China is also obliged to push back on the lifting of the ban on Russian pork, which is enough to see that the purpose of the relevant departments is not as simple as supplementing pork imports, but more like providing economic assistance to Russia.
The liberalization of pork imports has a huge impact on pork. Once the import of pork is released, the trend of pork ** in the future will become very clear, very certain, first of all, there is no shortage of pork in China, and it has even been a surplus recently.
In 2023, the national pork output will be 57.94 million tons, close to the historical high level of 58.21 million tons in 2014, the second highest in history, and a year-on-year increase of 46%。Not to mention my country's own production, my country will also import a lot of it in 2023. So far, China's pork imports have exceeded exports for 16 consecutive years. Imports increased from 37 in 2008330,000 tonnes increased to 1.55 million tonnes in 2023.
According to the monitoring data of Zhuochuang Information, in October 2023, the storage capacity rate of frozen pork products of key slaughtering enterprises in the country was 2445%, an increase of 77 percentage points. In the past ten years, the average storage capacity rate of frozen products is 355 percentage points, which is at a high level in the past ten years, representing the storage capacity of frozen products of slaughtering enterprises. So you see that the pig cycle that has been summed up based on experience in the past has completely failed. Since June 2002, China's pig fluctuation has experienced five complete cycles, and the duration of these five complete cycles is 47 months. 36 months, 59 months, 49 months and 36 months. Each complete cycle includes an upward phase, a ** stage, and the upward ** time has to last for about two years, but in the sixth cycle we are in now, this law does not apply. In April 2022, pork** turned into an upward channel after completing the fifth cycle, but the upward trend only lasted for 7 months.
Since November 2022, pork has continued to last, so why did each previous round of upward phase last for a year or two? The root cause of the short duration of this round of upward phase is that the supply of pork is too sufficient now, and the national breeding sow herd in 2023 will always be higher than the normal number of 41 million heads. By the end of last year, even if the number of fertile sows had declined, it was still above 41 million, reaching 41.42 million. You must know that it takes a long time from the breeding of sows to the slaughter of standard pigs, that is to say, it is difficult for pigs to decline in the short term. Judging from this trend, pig prices may be suppressed for a long time, and in this case, pork imports will be increased, and a total of 19 pork imports will be imported in 2023, and now there are imports from Russia and Belgium, which is equivalent to saying that China's pork imports have increased to 21 countries this year. Reflected in the hogs**, it will only be lower. Under the pressure of low pig prices, beef, mutton, chicken and other meats are also difficult to improve.