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Zimbabwe tobacco sales for 2015 down by 8.5 pct

Xinhua, July 17, 2015 Adjust font size:

The 2015 tobacco marketing season in Zimbabwe ended on Wednesday with sales dropping by 8.5 percent to 188.5 million kg from last year due to unfavourable weather conditions, an official said.

Tobacco earnings for the year went down to 555 million dollars from 654 million dollars in 2014, Tobacco Industry and Marketing Board (TIMB) chief executive Andrew Matibiri said.

He said this year's marketing season, which opened some weeks late in March, was a difficult one due to several challenges including the rejection of poor quality leaf by major buyers.

"Overally, it was a bit difficult in the sense that our major buyers were not after low quality tobacco," Matibiri said.

He said this had the negative impact of reducing seasonal average price of the leaf to about 2.95 cents per kg from about 3. 2 per kg last year.

Tobacco is Zimbabwe's prime export earner, accounting for 10.7 percent of the country's Gross Domestic Product.

The country exports 90 percent of the leaf, with China being the major importer of Zimbabwean tobacco.

Matibiri said there was a big proportion of poor quality leaf this year, standing at more than the normal standard of 15 percent for the entire crop due to poor rainfall patterns.

"Rains came very late and when they came they continued for a long time before drought came in. This was not good for tobacco and most of it did not grow fully," he said.

Matibiri, however, urged farmers to continue striving to produce quality leaf to remain viable.

"Farmers must listen carefully to what the market wants. They must grow that which is demanded by the market," he said.

He emphasized that buyers mainly buy Zimbabwe's tobacco leaf for blending to produce good flavour, hence the need for the growers to concentrate on producing quality, good flavour leaf.

Despite the drop in production this year, Matibiri hailed the country's levels of production.

"We are doing fine as far as yields are concerned, we just need to continue improving on quality," he said.

Zimbabwe has steadily increased production of tobacco leaf from a low of 48 million kg in 2008 to 216 million kg in 2014. However, the figures still fall below the 2001 peak production of 231 million kg. Endi