By FIDELITY MHLANGA
THE curtain is coming down on Andrew Matibiri’s tumultuous tenure at the helm of the Tobacco Industry and Marketing Board (TIMB) as he steps down from his CEO position in April next year.
Having risen to the helm of the company in 2005, Matibiri had a fair share of controversies during his 15 years’ tenure, which makes him one of the longest serving CEOs in the country.
Already, the TIMB board has contracted Industrial Psychology Consultants to search for the new CEO to replace him.
Below are highlights of Matibiri’s bitter-sweet journey at the apex of the company that acts as a regulatory intermediary between tobacco farmers and buyers. The e-marketing system that never was
During Matibiri’s reign, the board introduced the e-marketing system, which failed to live up to its billing when it was rolled out during the 2016/2017 tobacco selling season.
Matibiri flew to India to forge a deal with an unknown Indian company to install an e-marketing system on the tobacco floors.
The e-marketing system failed to take off on the first day of the marketing season due to technical glitches, forcing auction floors to revert to the manual system.
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The purpose of the system was to improve transparency in the pricing of tobacco and reduce the current tendencies on the auction market characterised by seemingly overt collusion by buyers.
Under the e-marketing system, the bidding process by buyers would involve the use of personal digital hand-held gadgets through which a buyer would secretly bid for tobacco without the influence of other buyers.
The system developed glitches on the day of its introduction, sending the marketing process into disarray.
There were allegations that the system was sabotaged by elements who benefited from the massive corruption and collusion synonymous the manual system.
Chaos, collusion at auction floors Matibiri, as the regulator, has been blamed for failing to weed out corrupt elements at the country’s tobacco floors.
Farmers have on several times protested against poor prices stemming from collusion between the country’s auction floors.
Farmers were enraged about the overt collusion in the pricing of tobacco whereby staff members were buying tobacco either at very low prices or rejecting the crop at the floors before corruptly reselling the same crop at a higher price.
These unscrupulous buyers, working in cahoots with members of staff involved in the tobacco selling processes, sold the ill-gotten tobacco at much higher prices.
Controversial TIMB headquarters Matibiri, who was related to the late former president Robert Mugabe, could be credited for the construction of the board’s headquarters at an estimated cost of US$15 million.
While Matibiri did well in overseeing the construction of the TIMB building, it is alleged that the construction cost was grossly inflated.
Warped licensing system According to a Memorandum of Understanding between contracting companies and TIMB, contract farming ends on December 31 of each year.
Thereafter, free growers who would not have been contracted are supposed to sell their tobacco crop on the auction system.
But of late bogus contractors have been forcing farmers to sell the crop to them.
This is despite the fact that they would not have issued inputs or any kind of financial support to the farmers.
TIMB was accused of abandoning farmers to fall prey to unscrupulous buyers.
Farmers have largely been falling prey to tobacco cartels, who would not have given them any support.
This explains the continued decline of tobacco crop delivery to auction floors.
It emerged during a Justice Mayor Wadyajena-chaired parliamentary portfolio committee on agriculture tour in June this year that a purported tobacco contracting entity, Countryside Leaf, which was housed on the same premises as Mbaluk, was buying the golden leaf without a licence.
Matibiri failed to provide satisfactory answers to the committee as to why some companies were buying tobacco without the requisite documents.
In 2010 Matibiri stirred controversy after he was charged with criminal abuse of power as a public officer as defined in the Criminal Law (Codification and Reform) Act after he allegedly illegally allocated himself eight growers’ numbers, which allowed him to sell tobacco without the authority of the TIMB board.
The collapse of Zimbabwe’s auction system Statistics show that deliveries to the auction floors are declining.
In Zimbabwe, tobacco is sold via auction and contract floors.
Contracting firms are supposed to provide financial support and inputs to farmers and then Zimbabwe has three auction floors, namely Premier, Tobacco Sales and Boka, which are all facing a bleak future.
Auction floor deliveries were merely 9,19 million kg out of 180,8 million kg total deliveries by the end of the 2020 season.
The auction floor deliveries constituted 5% of total deliveries. The remaining huge chunk of 171,6 million kg were delivered through contract floors.
Established in 1936, through the Tobacco Marketing and Levy Act, the auction floor system was, for years, the only platform where tobacco was sold in Zimbabwe.
The contract system made its debut in Zimbabwe in 2004 and has been gaining ground ahead of the auction floors.
In 2004, when contract floors were established, auction floors enjoyed a huge market share of 76,8%.
In 2005, auction floors contributed 60% and in 2006, this nosedived to 45% before tumbling further to 40,5% in 2007.
In 2008, it was 37,5%; 2009 (50%), 2010 (47,5%), 2011 (43,9%), 2012 (36,1%), 2013 (32,5%), 2014 (23,6%), 2015 (23,6%) and 2016 (17,2%). In 2017, this plummeted further to 16,5%, before dipping to 14,3% in 2018 and last year.
