By Deborah Madeya:
Government has extended the period during which tobacco growers can register and get licences to cultivate tobacco from December 18 2023 to January 31 this year.
Agriculture Minister Sam Kawale made the announcement Wednesday during a tour of Chimpeni Tobacco Estate in Zomba District.
“The period has been extended due to growing interest from people who want to grow tobacco this year.
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“When the period of registration closed on December 18, the ministry estimated that, from the number of growers registered, the country could produce up to 284 million kilogrammes of tobacco. As such, this extension will help us to have more tobacco grown and sold out, thereby giving us an opportunity to generate more forex,” Kawale said.
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The minister said this in the presence of Tobacco Commission (TC) Chief Executive Officer Joseph Chidanti Malunga.
He added that the interest could have been sparked by amendments made to the tobacco Act, which, he said, protects farmers from exploitation.
“As you know, tobacco contributes a lot to the economy of this country. We have already registered about 12 buyers but we are still getting more interested buyers. As such, we need farmers to have their tobacco sold at a fair price at the auction floors,” Kawale said.
On his part, Chimpeni Tobacco Estate Administrator Kenneth Banda asked the government to open the auction floors in good time this year.
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“Since we do irrigation farming, opening the market earlier would help us utilise the land by growing tobacco twice a year. It will also help us increase the labour force since producing tobacco twice a year requires manpower,” Banda said.
It is not the first time the tobacco farmers’ registration and licencing period has been extended.
On September 30 last year, TC announced that the duration had been extended to October 31 2023.
The exercise was supposed to close on September 30 that year.
Chidanti Malunga told journalists in Lilongwe that stakeholders and growers had requested for the extension to give them more time to register and licence for the crop.
“We have decided to extend the exercise by one month, giving enough time to farmers without charging any fee or imposing any penalty on them,” he said.
Malunga said they wanted to produce as much crops as possible because there are many traditional and international buyers who want more volumes of tobacco.
He further said they expected the extension to enable more farmers to produce tobacco legally as it is illegal for anyone in Malawi to grow the leaf without having a licence.
Tobacco contributes about 60 percent to the country’s foreign exchange earnings and 13 percent to gross domestic product.
