Zim chokes on low tobacco crop

[dArKeR]

Harare - Zimbabwe's annual tobacco trading season opens this week but it offers a much smaller crop than last year's already record low, industry officials said, blaming high input costs and the country's sky-high inflation rate.

The Tobacco Industry and Marketing Board (TIMB) estimated that about 60 million kilograms of the lucrative flue-cured tobacco crop would be on offer this year, a 25% drop from 80 million kilograms sold last year.

The figure, a record low in the 24 years since Zimbabwe's independence, was about a quarter of the record high of 237 million kilograms produced and sold in 2000.

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