Zim fails to meet tobacco target

Business
BY OUR STAFF ZIMBABWE has missed the 170 million kg tobacco production target set for the industry this year as the selling season for the “golden leaf” comes to an end on Thursday.

A clean-up sale will be held on September 20 and, depending on the volume of deliveries, would continue for more than one day, until all delivered tobacco has been sold.

Statistics from the Tobacco Industry and Marketing Board (Timb) show that 129,9m kg, a 11% increase from the same period last year, had been auctioned at the country’s three auction floors by Thursday.

Tobacco sales raked in US$356 582 527, representing a 4% increase from the same period last year.

At best the sales would reach 140 million kg more than 17% short of the target.

Andrew Matibiri, the Timb CEO conceded on Friday that the target would not be met, attributing it to unfavourable weather conditions that had some areas experiencing very wet spells while others went through a drought period.

He said handling losses also affected deliveries to the floors.

“Tobacco Research Board records that losses were at 21% and in some cases 31%,” he said.

Matibiri said farmers were not selling their low quality crop, arguing that “it is too costly to bring it to the auction floors”.

At the beginning of the season, Timb set a target of 170m kg. Last season 123m kg of tobacco were auctioned and Timb hoped the favourable prices offered would increase deliveries to the three auction floors this year.

However, the tobacco industry can take comfort in the fact that it had reduced the percentage of rejected bales to 7% by Thursday from 8,28% recorded in the same period last year.

Bales are rejected when they are, among other reasons, oversize, underweight or overweight.

They can also be rejected if they are badly handled (too wet or too dry) and mouldy.

Matibiri said the tobacco seed sold so far would cover 91 000 hectares of the crop.

Zimbabwe’s tobacco production is on a rebound, buoyed by the favourable prices on the auctions.

The high prices have driven farmers to prefer cash crops to staple food such as maize, whose price is controlled by government.

 

Tobacco was the backbone of Zimbabwe’s flourishing economy in the 1980s until the late 90s, as good quality leaf was known to originate from the country.

But the fast-track land reform programme decimated tobacco production as the new breed of farmers lacked the skills and capital to grow the crop in the absence of financing from banks.