By By Brenda Kayo and Chimwemwe Mangazi:
Figures don’t lie. This year’s tobacco marketing season has seen the average price for the green gold plummeting by 16.6 percent despite a jump in cost of production.
According to the latest report released by the Tobacco Commission (TC), at end of week three of tobacco sales, average price for the green gold was seen at $2.28 compared to $2.67 during the same period last year.
The report says a total of 14 million kilograms of tobacco were sold at a cumulative value of $31.9 million.
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This represents a 40.6 percent drop from the same period last year, when 20.1 million kilogrammes were sold, valued at $53.7 million.
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However, TC spokesperson Telephorus Chigwenembe did not respond to why there has been a decline in the price of the leaf this year.
But Chigwenembe noted that the commission has observed an improvement with increased sales volumes over the past two weeks of the 2025 tobacco sales.
“We saw low supply to the floors in the first two weeks of the selling season because, apparently, farmers were still working on their crop.
“Now that most of the work is done, we are seeing an upward trend in terms of the volumes,” Chigwenembe said.
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Auction Holdings Limited General Manager Graham Kunimba said the reduced volumes are a result of reduced trading days in the first three weeks of the market.
Tobacco Association of Malawi Trust president Abiel Kalima said current sales figures do not give hope to the farmers considering the high input costs incurred during farming.
“The figures suggest that the farmers’ profitability might be compromised due to the low sales prices and high production costs,” Banda said.
Tobacco is Malawi’s major export crop and foreign exchange earner.
For the 2025 tobacco market season the demand is at 213 million Kg.
