The Tobacco Board of Zambia has disclosed that it has targeted to procure about 43.3 million kilograms – kg of tobacco this year compared to the 44.4 million kgs procured last in 2023.
Speaking in an exclusive interview with the Zambian Business Times – ZBT, Tobacco Board of Zambia Chief Operating Officer, Tyndale Kasongole said the Board has procured about 35 million kgs as of 29th June 2024 valued at about USD$97 million by all the licensed buyers, and all the licensed self flows.
“We have got July, August to buy so you might probably find that we may reach that target or less than that but what has affected production is the same prolonged dry spells as it has not just affected Zambia but also the Sub region in general to an extent that it has affected the yields of tobacco and these other crops,” He alluded.
“The total volume of tobacco purchased as of 29th June 2024 stands at about 27.9 million kg is for FCB tobacco then 7.1 million kg is burn tobacco bringing the total to about 35 million kg of tobacco bought so far as at 29th June.”
“So the total value is $97 million so far and from the targeted volume it’s very difficult to say the value because the value is dependent on the quality of the tobacco so sometimes it fluctuates depending on the value you can have high volume but if the quality is very poor you end up with low value so I we go we keep on monitoring till a certain point.”
“The market usually closes around 30th September so we have about 2 to 3 months remaining.” He said.
Asked if the target is attainable looking at the prevailing drought which has hit hard on on almost all sectors of the economy, Kasongole said, “it has been difficult because of the drought but because tobacco is a bit drought resistant I think with the little rains that we received it picked up. So we might hit or we might be short by 3-4 million kgs.”
“Last year we closed with 44.4 million KGs and that has been the highest in terms of production in the last 10 years. The other 40 million was in 2014 when about 42 million kg was produced and since then we had not produced anything above that until 2023 when we had 44.4 million kg.”
“And our projection before the market and before the effects of the drought were being felt were based on the registration that were carried out, we had projected about 54 million kg but like I had explained we carry out validation to verify our crop forecast and at first when we just registered the farmers around December last year we carried out the crop forecast that gave us the real volume of 43.3 million but was registered was 54 million so we anticipated that we might go beyond what we produced last year but because of the drought we had to cut our projection by about 10% to 44 million.”
Kasongole added that, most exports are done after primary processing as they have just recently started buying the tobacco as of April when they opened and by May that’s when the volume increased as they had now moved towards the peak of the marketing season and processing had commenced by then leading to an increase in exports in agricultural products.
