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Business Reporter
TOBACCO Industry and Marketing Board (TIMB) has introduced a message (sms)  platform for tobacco inputs suppliers, contractors, seed suppliers, sale points and transporters, chief executive officer Dr Andrew Matibiri said. Dr Matibiri said those sending messages will send draft messages to TIMB for aggregation and the maximum message size is 160 characters.

“Once a message is approved it will be sent out to the grower’s numbers in the TIMB database without the sender actually seeing individual phone numbers,” he said.

The senders would be notified on the number of recipients before the message is sent out. The sms platform is user friendly.
“The charge is US1,5 cents per message, payable to TIMB,” he said.

The African Development Bank in its monthly economic review said there was need for the government and other stakeholders to conduct continuous training programmes with farmers and rolling out new initiatives as more farmers are beginning to venture into tobacco.

Tobacco is one of the country’s major agricultural exports, accounting for 10, 7 percent of gross domestic product and is the biggest cash crop in the country.

According to TIMB weekly tobacco reports, the 2013 seasonal sales were 16 percent firmer than the prior year.
TIMB projects a brighter 2014 season and they hope to surpass the 170 million kg of the golden leaf brought to the auction floors last season.

The tobacco industry has been on a recovery path since 2009 when the country adopted the multi-currency system.
The major export destinations for the country’s tobacco include China, South Africa, Indonesia, the United Arab Emirates, Mauritius and Russia.