Zimbabwe: Timb Urges Tobacco Buyers to Exhaust Local Crop First

Source from:  The Standard 01/17/2012

THE Tobacco Industry and Marketing Board (Timb) has proposed that buyers should exhaust the local crop before they can import burley tobacco in a move meant to save the sector from extinction. The proposal comes ahead of the opening of the 2012 selling season next month. Timb chairperson Monica Chinamasa told Standardbusiness last week that the move was also meant to keep the growers on the land. "We encourage buyers to purchase the local crop because it might be there outside the country yet they would have killed the local producers," she said. Burley tobacco growers have struggled over the years to sell their crop after the closure of Burley Marketing Zimbabwe (BMZ), an auction floor that was dedicated to the marketing of burley tobacco. Burley tobacco growers who owned BMZ sold the floor to Savannah Tobacco, a cigarette manufacturing company, in 2010. There was chaos last year after growers could not find a buyer for their crop. It was finally sold for a song at Boka Tobacco Floors. Burley tobacco deliveries rea-ched an all-time peak of 16 million kg in the 1990's. At that time, Zimbabwe was competing with Malawi, which has since outpaced it. Chinamasa said the chaos which happened last year would not repeat itself in the coming season as the Timb board resolved that burley tobacco growers have to be catered for and tasked the regulator to ensure that they are registered for planning purposes. She however, said that buyers were complaining the local crop was expensive, compared to the one from Malawi. The high prices emanate from the high production and the local crop cannot compete with the one from Malawi where most of the inputs are subsidised. Chinamasa told Standardbusiness Timb had resolved at a board meeting on Thursday that congestion should be minimised during the 2012 selling season. She said unlike last year, four tobacco floors Tobacco Sales Floor, Boka Tobacco Floors, Millennium Tobacco and Premier Tobacco -- would open simultaneously and it was up to each floor to reach out to growers. Last year, the selling season opened with one floor running, Tobacco Sales Floor while Boka and Millennium later joined during the course of the selling season. The board meeting also resolved to exercise its mind on how tobacco growers should be supported at a time of liquidity constraints with banks unable to finance farming. "We are looking at initiatives of supporting the grower who is doing well but can do more if supported. Tobacco is contributing a huge chunk to the Gross Domestic Product but that is not being reciprocated by those who allocate resources," she said. Chinamasa said that only growers under contract are well-catered for in terms of financing. The rest, she said, are struggling to make ends meet. Tobacco production is on the increase buoyed by favourable prices on the auction floor but it has not yet reached yesteryears' peak. In the 2011 season 132,4 million kg were sold below the 170 million kg output which had been projected by Timb. It raked in US$361,5 million compared to US$355,6 million realised in 2010. At its peak Zimbabwe produced 236 million kg in 2000. Enditem