Zimbabwe's tobacco sector suffers record production low

HARARE, Oct 21 (AFP) - Zimbabwe's normally lucrative tobacco sector suffered a deep slump in production this year, recording a more than 50 percent decrease on last year's output, the country's tobacco marketing body said Tuesday.

Production of the crop, previously Zimbabwe's top foreign exchange earner, dropped 50.6 percent, according to statistics released after the close of the 2003 tobacco marketing season.

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The Tobacco Industry and Marketing Board (TIMB) said 79.9 million kilogrammes of tobacco went under the hammer during the six months since April on three auction floors, compared with 162 million kilos sold last year.

The figure, a record low in the 23 years since Zimbabwe's independence, is less than one-third of the record high of 237 million kilos produced and sold in 2000.

Selling at an average price of 2.26 US dollars per kilo, tobacco turnover totalled 181 million US dollars this year. Last year, the sector racked up 368. 7 million dollars in sales, while in 2001 it brought in 630 million dollars.

Traditionaly tobacco had earned the southern African country 31 percent of its foreign currency.

Zimbabwe is desperately short of foreign exchange to import basic necessities such as petrol and diesel, as well as farming inputs.

The Zimbabwe Tobacco Association (ZTA), a grouping of mainly white tobacco farmers, had in January this year predicted a 50 percent drop in production owing to critical shortages of inputs such as chemicals and fertilizer, as well as shortages of coal and diesel needed for curing and transporting the crop.

The association said another inhibiting factor was uncertainty in the farming community caused by the government's controversial land reform programme, under which large commercial farms have been seized from minority white farmers and given to tens of thousands of new black farmers.

At the start of the just ended season, TIMB chairman Njodzi Machirori had forecast that between 100 million and 120 million kilogrames (220-265 million pounds) of the leaf would be available for sale.

Machirori had then attributed the slump in the predicted quantity to a drought and delays by the government of President Robert Mugabe in releasing agricultural inputs to black farmers resettled on land previously owned by whites, many of them tobacco growers.

Lands and Agriculture Minister Joseph Made was quoted in the state media Tuesday as blaming the central bank for delays in releasing funds to import seeds for the coming farming season.

Although Zimbabwe produces only about five percent of the world total of flue-cured Virginia tobacco, it is traditionally the second largest exporter of the leaf after Brazil on the international market.

It normally accounts for about 19 percent of total world exports, while Brazil exports about 29 percent of the global total.

Citing the inhibitive cost of inputs, ZTA president Duncan Millar predicted that next year's crop will drop further, to between 50 million and 60 million kilogrammes.

He noted that while growers were paid for their crop this year at the official exchange rate of 824 Zimbabwe dollars to the US dollar, input prices were pegged at the parallel market rate of 6,000 units to the greenback.

The scarcity of foreign exchange has grounded thousands of public commuter buses, stranding hundreds of thousands of workers.

Last week the country's railways suspended commuter train services for a few days due to lack of diesel.

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Zimbabwe-tobacco

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This article is Copyright 2003 by Agence France-Presse.

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