Zimbabwe's Tobacco Earnings Increase 20% on Improved Deliveries

Source from:  Bloomberg 07/13/2009

Zimbabwe tobacco farmers earned 20 percent more from sales of the leaf in the first seven weeks of auctions than they did last year, because of improved deliveries, the Tobacco Industry and Marketing Board said. Growers earned $102.7 million in the seven weeks to July 4, compared with $85.5 million a year earlier, the government agency said in an e-mailed statement today. Deliveries totaled 34.9 million kilograms (76.9 million pounds), compared with 27 million kilograms previously, it said. The average price of a kilogram of flue-cured tobacco fell 7 percent to $2.94 a kilogram this year, the Harare-based board said. Sales of tobacco seeds for the 2009-2010 season have jumped 67 percent to 247,460 kilograms from a year earlier, the board added. "Now that we're being paid in foreign currency for all our crop, tobacco is becoming viable again," Joseph Mapranga, a tobacco farmer from Zimbabwe's northeastern Centenary district, said in a phone interview today. Zimbabwe may sell about 42 million kilograms of tobacco this season, down from an estimated 75 million kilograms last year, the board has said. The southern African nation produces tobacco that rivals the U.S. for quality and is used to flavor cigarettes such as Marlboro and Benson and Hedges. Production has slumped since 2000 when Zimbabwe, then the world's number two exporter after Brazil, sold 236 million kilograms of tobacco. Enditem