Zim Tobacco Sales Slump 31%

Source from:  30/08/2006 17:23 - news24.com (SA)  08/31/2006

Zimbabwe's once vibrant tobacco sector was set to hit a new all-time low on Wednesday on the final day of the auction season with sales set to fall by 31% over the previous year, an official said. Andrew Ferreira, vice president of the Zimbabwe Tobacco Association, said that sales were expected to cross the 50 million kilogram threshold by close of trading but the figure would still be the worst since independence in 1981. "We are expecting that by the end of the day at least 50 million kilograms of the crop would have gone through across the three floors," Ferreira said, of the auction season which began in April. "This year's US dollar pricing was actually good as the average price across the floors was ranging between US$1.90 to US$1.91," he told AFP. Once a leading exporter, tobacco farming in Zimbabwe has fallen on hard times which critics and economists blame on President Robert Mugabe's land seizures, fuel and fertilizer shortages and disputes over pricing. Sales rebounded to 73 million kilograms last year after dropping to 64 million in 2004, but was still a far cry from the record 237 million kilogrammes of tobacco moved off the auction floors in 2000. Enditem