Zimbabwean Tobacco Sales More Than Doubled During Season, Board's CEO Says

Zimbabwe’s tobacco sales more than doubled to 120 million kilograms (265.6 million pounds) this season, according to the Tobacco Marketing and Industry Board.

The southern African nation generated about $350 million from sales of the leaf, the board’s chief executive officer, Andrew Matibiri, said by phone today from the capital, Harare. Farmers earned $164.9 million selling 54.8 million kilograms of tobacco last season, the board said in September last year.

“Mop-up sales to dispose of any tobacco remaining on the farms will be held in the next few weeks,” Matibiri said.

Zimbabwe’s tobacco selling season started on Feb. 1 and ended today. The size of the crop was estimated at 77 million kilograms in February, before being increased to 93 million kilograms in April and 114 million kilograms in August. It’s illegal to hold stock over until the next selling season.

Deliveries this year surpassed the 100 million-kilogram mark for the first time in eight years, the board said. Harvests of the leaf slumped from a record 236 million kilograms in 2000, when President Robert Mugabe’sZimbabwe African National Union- Patriotic Front party sponsored often-violent invasions of most white-owned farms in the country.

Zimbabwe is the world’s sixth-largest exporter of the flue- cured variety of the leaf, which is also known as Virginia tobacco. It lags behind Brazil, India, the U.S., Argentina and Tanzania, according to the website of Universal Corp., the world’s biggest tobacco-leaf merchant.

To contact the reporter on this story: Brian Latham in Durban, South Africa at blatham@bloomberg.net

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