Weather Adds to Zimbabwe's Woes

Source from:  tr.itsmyiq.com Jan 11, 2008 01/14/2008

Zimbabwe's tobacco growers are battling to secure foreign currency payments for tobacco auctioned during the most recent marketing season and failure to do so could affect their performance this season, according to a Financial Gazette report quoting industry sources. Tobacco farmers are supposed to receive 20 per cent of their payments in foreign currency under central bank measures put in place last year to boost crop production. However, problems have occurred because of delays in the release of foreign currency by the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe, which is having to allocate to critical sectors the little foreign cash trickling into the formal market. Meanwhile, the Gazette has reported also that the government's hopes to make the 2007-8 agricultural season a success could be dashed because of excessive rains and late planting by newly resettled farmers. Incessant rains have resulted in fields being waterlogged, but farming experts have said that crops could have been salvaged if farmers had planted earlier. Enditem