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Mozambique: Country to Export 43,000 Tonnes of Tobacco  

Maputo -- The tobacco producing company in the western Mozambican province of Tete, the Mozambique Leaf Tobacco, is planning to export up to 43,000 tonnes of this product by the end of this.

The company's general manager, Rod Hagger, told AIM that exports this year are set to increase by about 4,000 tonnes if compared with last year's.

'We exported 39,000 tonnes to different countries across the world last year, and we expect to export 43,000 tonnes this year, which represents an increase by 4,000 tonnes', he said.

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• Bill On Alcohol, Tobacco And Luxury Taxes 

The Mozambican parliament, the Assembly of the Republic, on Thursday passed the first reading of a government bill amending the rates of the Specific Consumption Tax (ICE).

This is a tax charged on goods damaging to health (such as tobacco and alcohol) and on luxury goods. It is charged in addition to the standard 17 per cent rate of Value Added Tax (VAT).

The government argues that the main purpose of such a tax is to discourage consumption of tobacco and alcoholic drinks. It also assists in redistribution by imposing a heavy tax on those who can afford luxury goods.

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‘Cigarette smuggling’ up in smoke for woman   

A 37-year-old Mpumalanga woman appeared in the Tonga magistrate’s court yesterday on a charge of importing illegal goods.

Police said they arrested Lucy Mahlalela, 37, of Nkungwini on Monday night at Mbuzini near Komatipoort during a routine roadblock.

Mahlalela, who was not asked to plead, is out on warning until February 13 pending further police investigation.

She was allegedly found in possession of 71 cartons of cigarettes brought into the country illegally from Mozambique.

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• MILLS: Lessons of Tete's Tobacco Tale  

VIEWED from the air, two things stand out in Tete. One is the 720m suspension bridge, built in the 1960s, spanning the expanse of the Zambezi . The other is a large, modern, white building, a $55m tobacco factory built three years ago, the likes of which the province had not seen since the Portuguese colonialists left in 1975. Until recently, the Mozambican province was better known for heat, dust, the Cahora Bassa hydro scheme on the Zambezi, and the $1,5bn coal investment made by Brazilian mining giant CVRD. It is not the place one expects to find a cutting-edge poverty alleviation programme. Nor does one expect it to be conceived and run by the private sector. But it is -- and this is why, unlike most aid programmes, it both works and is sustainable.

Over the past decade, US-affiliate Mozambique Tobacco Leaf Company (MLTC) has spread its supply network to 45000 outgrowers, each making on average $400 profit for their tobacco crop annually. Growing mainly burley tobacco, the crop has transformed the lives of probably half a million people.

These farmers simply subsisted from the land before. . . .

The company is engaged in malaria spraying programmes, and building infrastructure such as schools, bridges, road repairs, boreholes and clinics, resulting in the mushrooming of other investment such as transport and other agribusiness within the farming communities. About 6000 schoolchildren benefited from company schemes in 2006.

Such practices are driven partly by corporate social responsibility, with the tobacco industry especially sensitive to perceptions of its role. . . .

Tete's tobacco tale illustrates two things. First is the extraordinarily positive impact that export-led agriculture can have on poverty alleviation. It reaches the poorest parts of society and can quickly transform livelihoods and lives for the better. Second, commercial projects do what aid can never achieve. By placing extension services on a commercial footing, it grants a different logic to sustainability, one based not on pity but on performance.

Dr Mills heads the Johannesburg-based Brenthurst Foundation, and recently visited Tete province.

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• Mozambique: New tobacco regulations take effect 

A new set of regulations for the marketing and consumption of tobacco products took effect in Mozambique over the weekend.

From Saturday it was illegal to smoke in any public place, including all state institutions, restaurants, schools, libraries, hospitals, airports, train stations and all forms of public transport.

Restaurants, bars, and other places of entertainment can, if they choose, provide a space for smokers. But such a space must occupy no more than 25 per cent of their total area, clearly marked as a smoking area, and separated by walls from the non-smoking areas.

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• New Tobacco Regulations Take Effect 

A new set of regulations on the marketing and consumption of tobacco products took effect in Mozambique at the weekend.

From Saturday onwards it became illegal to smoke in any public place, including all state institutions, restaurants, schools, libraries, hospitals, airports, train stations and all forms of public transport (though it should be added that in most of these places, smoking had already been frowned upon, if not completely banned, long before these regulations were published)

Restaurants, bars, and other places of entertainment can, if they choose, provide a space for smokers. But such a space must occupy no more than 25 per cent of their total area, clearly marked as a smoking area, and separated by walls from the non-smoking areas.

The ventilation for such areas must ensure that the smoke is channelled outside . . .

The spokesperson for the Health Ministry, Martinho Djedje, regarded the new regulations as a first step to defend the public from the effects of tobacco. He said the Ministry has also submitted to the Cabinet a proposal to ratify the World Health Organisation's Framework Convention for Tobacco Control.

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• Tobacco Regulations - Details 

The Mozambican government's anti-smoking regulations, launched on Thursday, but due to take effect only in December, effectively outlaw all advertising of cigarettes and other tobacco products.

All the public media are banned from advertising tobacco products - which formalises what is already standard practice on Radio Mozambique and Mozambique Television (TVM).

Quite new is a ban on tobacco advertising on the covers of magazines and other publications, and the outlawing of tobacco adverts on billboards, posters, railway and bus stations and any other public spaces.

The tobacco industry itself is banned from boasting about any sponsorship activities.

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• Malawi presses tobacco fight 

But the country, while still pursing the diversification agenda, has not given up the fight to rescue a crop that is very much the backbone of the country’s economy as oil is to the Middle East. This time, however, Malawi does not want to continue with the battle alone. Economic Report has established that Malawi has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with tobacco producing countries of Zambia, Tanzania, Zimbabwe and Mozambique to help position the industry so that the countries reap more. Industry, Trade and Private Sector Minister Ken Lipenga said in an interview that the MOU was signed last November. Among other things, he said, the agreement looks at issues of collective marketing as well as value-adding.

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• NGOs urge Mozambique to ratify UN anti-tobacco Convention 

Civil society organizations under the umbrella of the Mozambican Public Health Association (AMOSAPU), have called the government to ratify the UN 2004 Geneva Convention on the control of the production and consumption of tobacco.

Margarida Matsinhe, AMOSAPU chairperson, told a seminar here Tuesday her organisation would keep up the pressure on the government to ratify the convention as an important instrument to protect people against the negative effects of tobacco consumption.

The seminar on leadership in controlling tobacco, brought together civil society representatives from all Portuguese speaking African countries.

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Tobacco Factory to Introduce Second Production Line 

Mozambique's only tobacco processing company, Mozambique Leaf Tobacco (MLT), is soon to introduce a second processing line and increase its installed capacity from the current 50,000 to 60,000 tonnes a year.

Alfredo Chambule, an official of the company, said that the introduction of the new processing line will call for an increase in the amount of raw tobacco and of the cultivated area, as well as the number of workers in the factory.

He told AIM that all conditions have been created for the installation of the new line, but everything depends on authorization by the relevant authorities.

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• Tobacco Giant Withdraws 

The tobacco giant Alliance One is pulling out of Mozambique in 2007, reports Friday's issue of the independent weekly "Savana".

Alliance One was formed out of a merger between the US-based companies Dimon and Stancom, both of whom held concessions in the Mozambican provinces of Niassa, Tete and Manica. They provided peasant tobacco growers with inputs, and purchased their crop.

The reason for the Alliance One decision to withdraw is that the most productive tobacco concession, in the Tete district of Chifunde was taken from Dimon in 2005, and given instead to Mozambique Leaf Tobacco (MLT), a subsidiary of the US Universal Leaf Africa Company.

Although "Savana" finds the government decision to switch the concession from Dimon to MLT "strange", the reason is extremely clear. The government wants tobacco processing to happen in Mozambique, and so urged the concessionary companies to build processing plants. Only MLT responded, and has built the second largest processing plant in Africa in Tete City. Its reward was the Chifunde concession.

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• Guebuza Inaugurates Tobacco Processing Plant 

Mozambican President Armando Guebuza on Sunday inaugurated the country's first tobacco processing plant, in the western city of Tete.

Before this factory was built, Mozambican producers had to take their tobacco over the border into Zimbabwe or Malawi for processing.

The factory is owned by Mozambique Leaf Tobacco (MLT), a subsidiary of the US-based Universal Leaf Africa Company, and represents an investment of 55 million US dollars.

The factory hopes to process and export 24,000 tonnes of tobacco this year, which should earn some 50 million dollars. The installed capacity is 50,000 tonnes of tobacco a year. The factory currently employs 1,600 workers, some on a permanent basis and some seasonal. . . .

Peasant producers in Chifunde are not happy, and on Thursday they told Guebuza that unless relations with MLT improve, they will stop growing tobacco.

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• Mugabe snuffs Zimbabwe tobacco, fueling Zambia boom 

Miklos Marffy lost his home, his farm and his crop two years ago when Zimbabwe's government seized his land near the northeastern town of Mvurwi. Last year, he grew $460,000 of tobacco in neighboring Zambia after a “reassuring” visit from President Levy Mwanawasa. Zimbabwe's neighbors are profiting from President Robert Mugabe's land redistribution program, which has ravaged the world's second-biggest tobacco export industry since 2000. More than 340 commercial farmers have relocated to Zambia, Mozambique, Malawi and Tanzania, creating jobs and boosting exports from some of the world's poorest countries. “The entry of Zimbabwean farmers into Zambia is a blessing to agriculture,” says Chance Kabaghe, 50, the chairman of Zambia Seed Co., who was deputy agriculture minister until last month and lives in the capital, Lusaka. “They bring with them the latest technology and knowledge.”

Universal Corp., the world's biggest tobacco-leaf merchant, and No. 3 Standard Commercial Corp. are backing the farmers

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Mwanawasa in Tobacco Trade Talks 

PRESIDENT Mwanawasa today held talks with his counterparts from Tanzania, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Botswana and Malawi on tobacco production and trade among the six countries.

The six presidents held the tobacco talks during a working breakfast at the Royal Palm Hotel.

Briefing the Zambian media immediately after the talks, Foreign Affairs minister, Kalombo Mwansa said the discussions were 'very fruitful'.

Dr Mwansa said the six heads of State discussed a number of issues in relation to tobacco production and trade among their countries.

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Mozambique's first tobacco processing factory to start operation in 2005 

Mozambique's first tobacco processing factory will start operation early next year in cental Tete province thus to end its dependence on Malawi to process the crop, local media reported on Thursday.

With an annual capacity of about 50,000 tons its processed tobacco will be exported to the United States, Europe and Asia.

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