Tobacco makes a recovery
http://www.thezimbabwean.co.uk
Written by Chief Reporter
Saturday, 11 June 2011 12:25
Highest sales in a decade
HARARE – The bids of buyers and sellers echoed loudly across the massive
Tobacco Sales Floor in Willowvale as 2,800 bales were sold. This has been
widely acclaimed as a 10-year record. But before the disastrous land
“reform” engineered by Zanu (PF) using party thugs in a desperate attempt
to stay in power, 18,000 bales were routinely sold every day.
Tobacco has traditionally been the mainstay of Zimbabwe’s economy and the
largest single export earner. After more than a decade of chaos that has
seen the often bloody invasion of 4,000 white-owned farms, tobacco
production had dropped to record lows.
But it is picking up again, with the latest figures showing that the current
production is just 20 per cent lower than record high production. The
Tobacco Industry Marketing Board said this week over 103million kgs of
tobacco worth $277million has been sold since the auction floors opened on
February 15 this year.
TIMB stats show that the three auction floors, Boka Tobacco Floors (BTF),
Millenium Tobacco Floors (MTF) and Tobacco Sales Floor (TSF) had by last
Friday sold 48 million kgs of tobacco while 55 million kgs had been sold
under the contract system.
The board’s CEO, Andrew Matibiri, said the average price was $2.69, a figure
lower than the $3.01 registered during the same period last year. He
projected that 170 million kgs of the golden leaf will be delivered to the
floors under the contract system. That would be a sharp increase from the
123 million kgs worth $347.8million sold last year.
Official vandalism
The decline so far, which industry figures blame on “official vandalism”,
represents a loss to the nation of millions in scarce dollars – disastrous
for a tiny economy like Zimbabwe’s. Although buyers, sellers and their
valuable produce covered barely one third of the sales floor, it was a
record-breaking week – the highest in a decade A floor manager at the
auctions said: “Its beginning to look up. Comparing this with 10 years ago,
we would be fully booked by now. There has been so much uncertainty about
the future. But it seems the new farmers are filling the gap, even though
there are issues with the quality of the leaf, hence the lowering of
prices.”
After grabbing the commercial farms, the “new” tobacco farmers have had to
cope with fuel and currency shortages. One buyer said: “It’s a miracle that
we have a crop at all, given all that has happened over the past decade.”
Perhaps most disastrous of all, many of Zimbabwe’s best tobacco farms were
among the 4,000 properties “compulsorily acquired” by the government. Once a
farm’s ownership is under dispute from the evicted white farmer, banks will
not provide loans and the new farmers have struggled to maintain production.
It is believed the majority of the white farmers who have been kicked out
were mainly tobacco farmers.
Evicted farmers
Tobacco industry experts say Zimbabwe has lost a lot of growers to New
Zealand and Australia and the few who remain grow less with the new farmers
providing the bulk of the crop.
Evicted farmers who have sought legal redress have argued that the onslaught
on the tobacco industry is part of President Robert Mugabe’s wider attack on
the white minority. He has pledged to end what he calls “white control” of
the economy and tobacco – largely grown by white farmers and sold to white
buyers – has always fed his paranoia. By wrecking the formal economy, Mugabe
has reinforced his grip on power by creating a Zimbabwe where everyone was
dependent on government patronage.
One industry figure said: “This is official vandalism with a political
purpose.” But Matibiri says the new farmers have proved to be competent in
tobacco farming, and said the major challenge has been congestion at the
auction floors. He said TIMB was decentralising its operations into the four
main tobacco producing provinces in Mvurwi (Mash Central), Marondera (Mash
East), Rusape (Manicaland) and Chinhoyi (Mash West).
“Farmers are now able to get services at these centres with regards to
registration, submission of production estimates, sales bookings and general
advice on topical matters in the industry,” he said. He said the new policy
of “deliver today, sell tomorrow” was aimed at improving efficiency of the
marketing system and providing small scale producers, which are in the
majority, with as much assistance as possible.