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the three tobacco auction floors for the rest of this week – to deal with a 13 000- bale stockpile of flue-cured tobacco.
According to a notice issued yesterday, all new tobacco deliveries to the auction floors had been suspended until tomorrow.
Deliveries would resume on Saturday, April 9. Growers were to note that the auction floors would not accept any tobacco not booked for sale in advance. Such tobacco, the notice said, would be turned away from the delivery queues.
“We have already sent teams into the farming communities to advise the farmers over the issue,” said the statement. “They will also be working with Agritex extension officers.”
TIMB chief executive Dr Andrew Matibiri yesterday said there were 6 000 bales waiting to be booked at the Tobacco Sales Floor.
This was in addition to the 3 000 bales that went under the hammer at the floors yesterday.
Boka Tobacco Floors had 4 000 bales waiting to be booked over and above the 3 000 bales sold yesterday.
Millennium Tobacco Floors, which started operating yesterday, had between 2 000 and 3 000 bales in the queue, in addition to the 3 600 sold yesterday.
Dr Matibiri said they would now abide strictly by the practice of “deliver today and sell tomorrow”. This would apply at all the auction floors.
“We are going to be working with transport operators that are registered with us, to ensure that they book the tobacco they will be bringing to the floors before they actually collect and deliver the tobacco,” he said.
“We will also apply the same principals on the farmers, to ensure adherence.”
The TIMB has been calling upon growers to exclusively engage the services of transporters registered with the board and whose payment is done through the Central Shop Order System.
Farmers who have been coming to the floors without having booked their crop, as required, had primarily caused congestion at the floors.
The decentralisation of the registration process by the TIMB late last year has not produced the desired results as most farmers were ignoring the registration teams sent out to their areas. They preferred instead to proceed to Harare to register and sell their crop at the same time.
At the beginning of the marketing season, about 32 000 farmers had registered to sell their crop this year, compared with 52 000 last season.
But the number had almost doubled to 52 226 as of last week, with 3 462 growers having registered last week alone.
Tobacco farmers this week told parliamentarians from the Portfolio Committee on Agriculture, Water, Lands and Resettlement touring the floors that disruptive activities, such as jumping of queues by politicians and members of the uniformed forces, was causing congestion at the floors.
In addition, the auction floors have been failing to conclude the sales, resulting in a carry-over of bales from the previous sale to the next day’s sale.
A total of 170 million-200 million kg of flue-cured tobacco are expected to be delivered to the floors this season, up from 120 million kg last season.
To date 33,3 million kg have been sold since the season began at an average price of US$3,01 per kg, realising US$100,5 million.
This compares favourably with last year’s 26,5 million kg sold at US$3,17 per kg raising US$84,1 million during the same period.
Of the 33,3 million, 19,3 million kg worth US$61,7 million was sold under contract at an average price of US$3,19 per kg.
The balance of 14 million kg worth US$38,8 million was sold under auction at US$2,76 a kg.