adminfloors during the 2012 tobacco selling season, an official said Saturday.
This year, three firms operated auction floors in Harare amid calls by farmers to decentralise sales floors to ease congestion. Five of the applicants are seeking licenses to operate auction floors in Harare while six will be spread in the following tobacco growing districts-Makonde, Rusape, Chinhoyi, Marondera and Mvurwi.
TIMB chief executive officer Dr Andrew Matibiri said the board was still considering the applications.
“At the moment the board is still considering the applications, successful applicants will be announced soon,” Dr Matibiri said. Zimbabwe is the world’s sixth-largest exporter of the flue – cured Virginia tobacco after
Brazil, India, the United States, Argentina and Tanzania, according to the website of Universal Corp, the world’s biggest tobacco-leaf merchant.
Last season 52 000 farmers registered to produce tobacco on 65 000 hectares. At the close of the auction floors on September 3, more than 120 million kilogrammes of tobacco had been sold with the contract system contributing the bulk of the deliveries. The industry had projected an output of 77 million kg to go under the hammer but this was later revised twice, first to 93 million kg and then to 114 million kg. An estimated 250 000 people are directly employed in the production of tobacco. – New Ziana.
with the figure excluding downstream and ancillary businesses such as the auction floors, transport and the processing plants.
Tobacco is the country’s top agricultural foreign currency earner so far. – New Ziana
Bunjiwe Mkwananzi