Zimbabwe tobacco sales fetch $140m
September 21, 2005
By Michael Hartnack
Harare - Sales of Zimbabwe's major export, Virginia flue-cured tobacco, officially closed yesterday after fetching about US$104 million (R664.6 million) on a crop that was just a fraction of what was harvested before the seizure of 5 000 white-owned commercial farms.
With returns still to be received from a few "tidy up" auctions, about 70 million kilograms had been sold at an average price of $1.63 a kilogram, said a spokesperson for the Zimbabwe Tobacco Association. The association represents 850 large-scale commercial growers, now overwhelmingly black Zimbabweans, and 30 000 peasant farmers who recently started production.
This compared with a 237 million kilogram crop between 1999 and 2000 sold as President Robert Mugabe ordered an invasion of white farms, then covering 17 percent of the country.
The 2000 crop fetched about $400 million during a year when the average price was very low because of bumper crops elsewhere.
Economist John Robertson estimated $2 billion would have been earned from this year's tobacco crop at current prices if the industry had remained undisturbed and able to produce Zimbabwe's traditional high-quality, low-nicotine "flavouring" tobacco. Much of the tobacco produced by new peasant growers is low-priced "filler" grades.
Opening sales in April were forced to close by angry peasant producers who said they could not meet production costs with prices below $1 a kilogram.
Officials said next year's harvest was likely to be even worse.
The government-appointed Tobacco Industry Marketing Board said on Monday that the 2005/06 season might be "a disaster" because of lack of fuel and fertilisers, late preparations and labour problems.
The marketing board chairman, Njodzi Machirori, told The Herald newspaper that the coming season was likely to be "the worst in history", with only 857ha being put under tobacco instead of the 150 000ha target.
He said new farmers lacked working capital, with banks unwilling to give advances in time. The board said most growers were two weeks behind schedule and faced a shortage of their most vital fertiliser compound and a lack of diesel to prepare the fields.
- Sapa-AP
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