Share & more
Officials of Zimbabwe’s tobacco industry on Monday said that farmers have stepped up deliveries of the crop to auction floors following a 25 percent devaluation of the local currency three weeks ago, media reports said.
Tobacco farmers, whose crop earns Zimbabwe 40 percent of its foreign currency, had withheld the bulk of their crop when the auction floors opened in April demanding a devaluation of the Zimbabwe dollar.
However, the officials said the volumes of overall tobacco sales up to the end of last week were still down compared to the corresponding period in 1999 due to the farmers’ boycott over the fixed exchange rate. They said so far, only 89.2 million kg of the country’s 220 million kg crop this season had been sold compared to 103.8 kg at the same time in 1999.
This article was produced by IRIN News while it was part of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Please send queries on copyright or liability to the UN. For more information: https://shop.un.org/rights-permissions