The Tobacco Board of Zambia – TBZ has announced that it is currently conducting a research on the viability of planting tobacco seeds from Malawi and Zimbabwe in Zambia as way of increasing varieties and revenue in the tobacco industry and bringing more buyers on board.
TBZ Chief Executive Officer James Kasongo has told the Zambian Business Times – ZBT in an exclusive interview that the board has currently grown 34 hectares of tobacco seeds from the named two countries saying the initiative is aimed at contributing to the increase in tobacco production aside sharing the outcome of the research.
He disclosed that the industry had in the 2019 marketing season recorded total production of 28 million Kilograms compared to 31 million Kilograms recorded in 2018 hence the move was also prompted to arrest the decline in production recorded in the previous years.
“This initiative is an agreement between the board and the two countries, once the tobacco is ready, are going to sell it and that’s part of the research because we want to see how it will perform on our soils and our expectation is that it yields positive results, because that will be an added advantage to the Zambian market,” he said.
Kasongo has further revealed that the board is currently undertaking an exercise of yield estimation for all tobacco growers in the country which will determine the yield expected in the country for this year’s marketing season.
He added that the process which is set to be complete by March 2020 will also disclosed the number of farmers involved in this year’s marketing season and will announce the hectares grown. He said the board is ready to engage with stakeholders in declaring profit for the industry by calling for more buyers on the market as it will add to the growth of the industry and improve forex inflow for the country at large.
“We want to get back to the positon where the industry can effectively contribute to the national treasury, before 2014 we were contributing 3% to the nation’s GDP but of late, we have been contributing about 1% due to low production, therefore having more buyers on board will lead to the increase in production and benefit the country as a whole,” he said.
