CONTENTS | ANB-BIA HOMEPAGE | WEEKLY NEWS
|
Malawi |
ECONOMY
This year, Malawi’s largest foreign exchange earner, tobacco, is fetching
low prices,
largely due to the world-wide anti-smoking campaign
initiated
by the World Health Organisation.
This is having a disastrous effect on
Malawi’s economy
«Tobacco prices have been the lowest this year since tobacco cultivation was introduced into this country,» says Leonard Mangulama, Malawi’s Agriculture and Irrigation Minister. «Tobacco usually contributes about 40% of Malawi’s Gross Domestic Product and usually brings in 70% of the country’s foreign currency.» The minister said that because of the intensification of the anti-smoking campaign, his ministry is negotiating with development partners to see how they can assist the government in increasing the number of irrigation schemes, which, will in turn, help the Government to diversify crop production throughout the country. The minister called on farmers to embark on the cultivation of alternative crops such as cotton, groundnuts, cassava and to embark on growing spices. He was speaking at the 12th Tobacco Association of Malawi Congress, held in Lilongwe in June this year.
Charlie Graham is chairman of the Tobacco Exporters Association of Malawi. At the same Congress, he urged farmers, in spite of what is happening to tobacco as a whole, to aim at producing high quality tobacco so as to attract high prices. He attributed this year’s low tobacco prices to intermediate buyers who did not process the tobacco leaves properly.
Another Congress delegate, Patrick Damiton, who comes from southern Malawi, said he did not welcome the anti-smoking campaign because tobacco cultivation provides employment for many people. «The low tobacco prices have had an adverse affect on our standard of living. We will not have enough money to feed ourselves».
A local tobacco farmer, Henry Ntaba, representing the grassroots membership of the industry, informed delegates that some money-lending institutions have to bear a degree of responsibility for the decline of the tobacco industry. «This is what’s happening», he said, «some banks have stopped giving loans to those farmers who failed to pay back their loans because their tobacco crop didn’t fetch a good price. And it’s going to be the same story frequently this year. We need to pay our workers. We also have to pay for transporting the leaf from the farm to the selling point».
In 1999, Malawi produced 14.3 million kilogrammes of flue cured tobacco and 13 million kilogrammes in 2000. In 1999, the country produced 111.4 million kilogrammes of Burley Tobacco (a tobacco which contains almost no sugar which gives it a much dryer and full aroma than Virginia Tobacco. Its curing is done by air in large open barns for one or two months) and this year it has produced 125 million kilogrammes. Much of the crop is exported through the ports of Dar-es-Salaam in Tanzania, and Beira in Mozambique.
Malawi’s Opposition is concerned by current trends in the tobacco industry. Opposition leader John Tembo recently stated in parliament: «Malawi has largely depended on the production of tobacco to boost its economy over the past years. The Government must persuade the World Health Organisation to reconsider its campaign in the light of what is happening in Malawi.»
While health needs must always be considered, it must not be to the detriment of an entire country’s economic growth.
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