Zimbabwe: Tobacco Farmers Offered Wrapping Paper

Source from:  The Herald 07/24/2009

Harare - THE Zimbabwe Industry Tobacco Auction Centre has offered to help tobacco growers source tobacco wrapping paper especially during the selling season. Shortage of the wrapping paper has always been a problem to tobacco growers often leading to delays in delivering their crop to the floors while in some cases the farmers have been forced to buy the paper at exorbitant prices on the parallel market. The company's chief executive officer Mr Hillary Ngombe said his company was facing challenges in providing growers with the packaging material in time. In most cases ZITAC sells the paper to farmers while other choose the stop order system where the paper is provided to them and the money is later deducted from their proceeds when they sell their crop. "We are working on addressing the shortage of wrapping paper. The company is importing some from South Africa, but we are not coping with demand. "We are currently working on the budget so that we meet the demand. We do not want our farmers to struggle in getting the wrapping paper," he said. Tobacco is one of the country's leading foreign currency earners. Of late farmers have been struggling in accessing wrapping papers. Meanwhile, Mr Ngombe said that his company was negotiating with ABSA Bank of South Africa to for a US$21 million facility to fund 5 000 hectares of tobacco for small-scale farmers during the 2009/10 season. Recently, the country received a US$60 million loan facility from a Tunisian bank to boost tobacco production. Enditem