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| National |
| Plastics slacken tobacco sales |
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by
George Ntonya, 10 June 2004
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19:07:51
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About 10 million kilogrammes of tobacco is stuck in Malawi because international buyers are not happy with plastic papers some growers have been putting in their bales, Tobacco Control Commission (TCC) has confirmed.
This has forced the auction floors to reduce the volume of tobacco bought on daily basis from 20,000 bales to 12,000 bales, according to TCC general manager Godfrey Chapola.
“We have a lot of processed tobacco which has not yet been exported, so there is a problem of storage at the factories. We have around 10 million kilogrammes of tobacco which has not been exported,” Chapola said in a telephone interview on Thursday.
Tobacco remains Malawi’s major foreign exchange earner but the country risks losing its major buyers because of unscrupulous growers who put plastic papers in their bales to increase weight.
Chapola said that the international buyers delayed to confirm their orders because they wanted the tobacco industry to assure them zero tolerance for plastic papers.
“They want zero tolerance. They don’t want even a hair thin plastic [in the tobacco] and you know how difficult it is to remove the hair thin plastic,” he said adding that exportation of the tobacco would start soon.
Meanwhile Lilongwe Auction Floors is only buying 6,000 bales of tobacco per day instead of 10,000 bales, while Limbe and Mzuzu flours are buying 3,000 bales each from 5,000 bales.
The tobacco processing plants are also not running at full throttle, said Chapola
Limbe Leaf managing director Charlie Graham said in March that the country lost US$1 million from tobacco sales over the last few years because of the problem of plastic papers.
“We have lost in excess of $1 million,” Graham told people who attended annual field day at Agricultural Research and Extension Trust (Aret) in Lilongwe before the opening of this year’s tobacco sales.
The problem has also forced TCC to call for a meeting of captains in the industry and representatives of the growers to find solutions, to be held on July 9 in Lilongwe.
“I have organised a mid-season seminar on August 9 so that we look at this problem. This tells you how serious it is. Normally, we organise tobacco seminars at the end of the season but because this issue is serious we’ll have a one-day seminar next month,” Chapola said.
The slackening of tobacco sales is likely to result in the extension of the marketing season, Chapola said.
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