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• BAT to continue sponsoring underprivileged students  

BRITISH American Tobacco will continue supporting underprivileged students to attain their goals by providing scholarships for tertiary education, the company said last week.

Speaking at the presentation of two scholarships to two University of Zimbabwe students in Harare, British American Tobacco Zimbabwe Limited board member, Mr Jeremiah Tsodzai, said the company would continue to empower students especially those that were underprivileged.

"We subscribe to the business principle of good corporate conduct which captures how the company strives to manage the business. Business success brings with it an obligation for high standards of behaviour and integrity in everything we do and whatever the company is associated with," Mr Tsodzai said.

BAT Zimbabwe (Holdings) Limited managing director, Mr Lovemore Manatsa said so far 52 students had benefited from the Undergraduate Scholarship Scheme established in 2005.

The scheme is run with the blessing of the Ministry of Higher and Tertiary Education and has drawn participants from various State tertiary institutions and agricultural colleges around the country.

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• Storm at DeMbare 

PREMIERSHIP side Dynamos are set to lose close to US$1 million from their official sponsors — Savanna Tobacco — if they play in an Oya Challenge, which is bankrolled by a rival tobacco company Blend Value on October 4. DeMbare, who are are sponsored by Savanna Tobacco through their Pacific Storm brand have been hand picked to play against CAPS United in the Oya Challenge.

The new kid on the block is using the derby to promote their brand — Oya.

Savanna Tobacco have threatened to pull the rug on Dynamos if they go aheadand play as the contract forbids them from associating with rival tobacco companies.

DeMbare are set to lose US$370 000 which is expected to go towards the purchase of a luxurious team bus. In addition to this, the Glamour Boys will lose their branded kit and the payment of salaries for the players.

Savanna Tobacco dropped the bombshell on DeMbare, in a letter to Zifa chief executive officer Henrietta Rushwaya on Friday.

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• Sweet Kiss of Life  

MONOMOTAPA have received a major boost in their tough battle to turn around a Champions League campaign that has gone off the rails with a local tobacco company, Blend Value, injecting US$50 000 into their coffers ahead of their showdown against Congolese giants TP Mazembe at Rufaro tomorrow.

The cash injection by the company a new player in the local tobacco industr is meant to boost morale among the Monomotapa players and help them focus on their assignment against the former African champions. . . .

Mugavazi and Sibanda certainly have friends and, among the people they can call their partners, are the directors of Blend Value Tobacco, who yesterday unveiled a US$50 000 package to help Monomotapa in their hour of need.

Blend Value Tobacco are the manufacturers of the Oya! brand, which they want to dominate the domestic market, and they have already announced that this is just the start of their big partnership with Zimbabwean football.

Blend Value director Tawanda Chitapi, a prominent Harare lawyer, said his company decided to help Monomotapa because the Harare side was representing the country and needed the help of everyone in their bid to try and conquer the continent. . . .

"If Blend Value are the tobacco company that is sponsoring football, we believe that football should also appreciate that support with the fans choosing their products ahead of their competition which might not be playing a part in the game.

"We decided to help Monomotapa so that they can sort out some of the challenges that they have been facing of late," said Chitapi.

The Harare lawyer is also a passionate football fan who has worked, mostly behind the scenes, resolving some of the wrangles that have beset the national game.

"It's important, in our small way, to play our part in the area of social responsibility. "After reading about Monomotapa, and the challenges they were facing with regard the need to raise money for their campaign, we decided to partner Zifa and assist the team. . . .

The Zimbabwe National Soccer Supporters' Association yesterday issued a rallying cry to the country's football fans to come in their thousands and back the Monomotapa cause at Rufaro tomorrow.

ZNSSA security chief Fortune Bgwoni also hailed Blend Value for leading the way in helping Monomotapa in their hour of need.

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• Smokers Puff Away 200m Cigarettes 

ZIMBABWEANS puffed up close to 200 million cigarettes during the first quarter of the year, figures release by a leading cigarette maker showed.

Savannah Tobacco sold half a billion cigarette sticks in Zimbabwe and other markets during the first quarter of this year, executive chairman Adam Molai said.

Savannah Tobacco, which produces the Pacific brand of cigarettes, launched the cigarette brands a few years back buoyed by an aggressive product mix targeting both low-end to top-end consumers.

In Zimbabwe the company sold 168 million cigarette sticks in the first quarter while 322 million cigarettes found their way into foreign markets, according to figures released by Savannah.

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• CHIKWATI: Good times for tobacco farmers but . . . 

THE good times are rolling again for farmers after the tobacco season started last week.

Under the current system farmers are being paid US$1 500 in cash payouts while the remainder of their proceeds are being deposited in their Foreign Currency Accounts.

While it’s all very well, this is a very precarious period for the farmers as it can make or break them, depending on their spending priorities or how they safeguard their produce.

I understand there was a raging debate on the amount of money that should be paid out to the farmers in cash, with some stakeholders holding the view that farmers should get at least US$500, judging by their conduct in previous seasons.

Some farmers, especially men, have been known to squander the proceeds from their sales.

They have been known, for instance, to marry second or third wives, or "living it up" . . .

Farmers’ unions should come to the forefront because their main responsibility, first and foremost, is to serve the farmer and this is one area that has not been effective.

Kudos to the auction floors for having made adequate provisions for farmers. . . .

I wish the tobacco growers a bountiful selling season and hope there will be no reports of people committing suicide as a result of misunderstandings over the spending of profits.

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• Quit Smoking for Africa 

SOS Children is launching a new campaign asking smokers to "quit for Africa".

"Even though everyone understands the health benefits" said ex-smoker and fundraising director Kathie Neal "giving up smoking is a long and painful haul which requires sticking power. Knowing that the money you save is directly helping children alone could really help".

Even if they buy some cigarettes abroad, smoking ten cigarettes a day typically costs a smoker between £60 and £120 a month, the same as the cost of 3 to 6 child sponsorships. SOS Children suggests that to increase the satisfaction of quitting and help smokers to celebrate their ongoing achievement they use just 60p a day, a small part of this saving, to sponsor a child in Zambia, Zimbabwe or Malawi, tobacco-growing areas of Africa. SOS Children helps children throughout Africa

"The actual benefit to the African worker from a tobacco smoker is tiny, since the losers when you quit smoking are mainly the tax man and tobacco companies (who get most of the money from cigarettes" explained SOS CEO Andrew Cates "but nonetheless it seems appropriate to give something back to the countries which will lose the export".

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• Zimbabwe's economy 'literally sustained by beer and cigarettes' 

Revenue from tax on alcohol and tobacco has been the key contribution to Zimbabwe's overall income, Finance Minister Tendai Biti said in presenting a revised 2009 budget to Parliament. "Indirect taxes made up of customs and excise duty have contributed 88 per cent of government revenue which means that the government has been literally sustained by beer and cigarettes. This is unacceptable," Biti said.

The newly-appointed Biti revised downwards overall revenue expectations from the 1,7 billion US dollars announced by his predecessor in January to 1 billion dollars. Biti said expenditure would top 1,9 billion dollars, therefore the budget forecasts a 43 per cent loss.

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• Zimbabwe’s Tobacco Crop May Decline 40% This Year (Update2) 

Zimbabwe’s official tobacco harvest may fall as much as 40 percent to 42 million kilograms (93 million pounds) this year as destitute farmers sell the leaf illegally, the government’s Tobacco Industry and Marketing Board said.

The southern African nation last year produced an estimated 70 million kilograms of tobacco leaf. The exact size of the crop may be difficult to measure because destitute farmers are selling their leaf on the black market, Andrew Matibiri, chief executive officer of the board, said in a phone interview from the capital, Harare, today.

“The practice is illegal, but some farmers are desperate because they’re facing challenges,” said Matibiri. Under Zimbabwean law, tobacco can only be sold on auction or to licensed merchants.

Farmers are selling tobacco for as little as $1 a kilogram, compared with an average price of $3.20 a kilogram last year, the marketing board chief said. The southern African nation produces flue-cured tobacco that rivals the U.S. for quality.

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• Zimbabwe Tobacco Season Officially Ends; Deliveries Down 40% 

Zimbabwe's tobacco selling season officially ended last week with deliveries dropping 40 percent from a year ago, the Tobacco Industry and Marketing Board said.

Farmers brought 45 million kilograms (99 million pounds) of the leaf to auction houses by Sept. 26, compared with 75 million kilograms a year earlier, Andrew Matibiri, chief executive officer of the Harare-based board, said by phone today. Unofficial sales will continue to be held every two weeks.

``There is still a lot of tobacco on the farms,'' Matibiri said.

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• Tobacco Production To Miss Target 

WITH a week left before the 2008 tobacco selling season ends, farmers have missed the targetted output by about 70 million kilogrammes from the initial projection of 120 million kg.

Figures made available from the Tobacco Industry and Marketing Board (TIMB) on Tuesday revealed that a total of 44,9 million kg valued at US$145,6 million was sold on the 97th day of trade compared to 70,4 million valued at 164,9 million achieved during the same period last year.

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• Chinese firm happy with tobacco industry  

A LOCAL Chinese-owned company has expressed confidence in the country’s tobacco industry saying the key export earner has shown bright prospects in terms of production and income growth.

Speaking at a prize-giving day for contract farmers yesterday, the Chinese Ambassador to Zimbabwe, Mr Yuan Nansheng, said his country’s Tian Ze tobacco contract farming company had achieved meaningful results in its short stint in Zimbabwe.

As a result, Mr Yuan said, the company’s annual input for the tobacco- contract-farming scheme has exceeded US$10 million.

"The establishment of Tian Ze company in Zimbabwe is because of the Chinese government’s support for the tobacco production development in Zimbabwe.

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• Tobacco Farms in Ruins 

Bedford’s vast but now desolate tobacco plantation is one of about 20 leading tobacco farms that have been vandalised by land invaders in the Wedza district, an hour’s drive south-east of Harare.

Mashonaland East, where Wedza lies, was one of the top tobacco growing provinces in Zimbabwe. Now all that is gone.

Just eight years ago, Zimbabwe was the biggest exporter of tobacco in the world, producing 236.1 million kg a year.

This all changed in 2000, when controversial land grabs saw white commercial farmers evicted and their farms given to poor black Zimbabweans and government cronies with little knowledge or experience of farming.

In September this year, the official Tobacco Industry and Marketing Board announced that only 40.8-million kg of tobacco was produced by new indigenous farmers – less than one-sixth of what was harvested in 2000. . . .

US-based buyers Standard Commercial, Universal and Dimon have traditionally bought the bulk of Zimbabwe’s crop to flavour cigarette brands, such as Marlboro and Camel.

However, Zimbabwean tobacco, once considered by buyers to rival US varieties, has now been excluded from blends used by the biggest cigarette makers because the quality and quantity of the crop is declining.

British American Tobacco, BAT, the biggest maker of cigarettes in Zimbabwe, recently cut 170 jobs in the country because of the dwindling crop.

China, which in the 1990s bought as much 30 million kg of lemon-style tobacco from Zimbabwe each year, will buy only five million kg this year, say officials.

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• Case study: Thriving tobacco crop stubbed out by settlers  

When 40 settlers were moved on to Don Miller's 1,100 hectare (2,700 acre) farm in Tengwe in northeast Zimbabwe, they found an efficiently run agricultural unit. All they had to do was to carry on what he had been doing. . . .

"They are not commercial farmers," said Mr Miller. "They don't have the skills for commercial agriculture, so they carried on with what they know, susbsistence farming. The government funding for resettled farmers was grabbed by the cheffes [ruling party bigwigs] so they got nothing. And they lack ambition."

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• Zimbabwe's Tobacco Deliveries Decline 28%, Marketing Board Says 

Zimbabwe's tobacco deliveries so far this season declined 28 percent compared with the same period last year, the government's Tobacco Industry and Marketing Board said.

Farmers in Zimbabwe have delivered 30.2 million kilograms (67 million pounds) of tobacco to auction, or directly to merchants, since sales began on May 5, down from 42.2 million kilograms in the same period last year, the Harare-based marketing board said in an e-mailed statement late yesterday. . . .

Zimbabwe, which until 2000 was the world's second-biggest exporter of flue-cured tobacco after Brazil, has slipped to sixth place after Brazil, India, the U.S., the European Union and Argentina.

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• ZIMBABWE: Tobacco Sector Up in Smoke as State Violence Escalates 

Tobacco was the mainstay of the southern African state’s economy during the 1980s and 1990s. The ‘‘golden leaf’’ was the county's main export product, accounting for around 50 percent of Zimbabwe's foreign currency earnings. Some 700,000 people are dependent on the industry for their living.

For decades, Zimbabwean tobacco was coveted by blenders as amongst the finest in the world. According to statistics from the statutory body Zimbabwe Trade (ZimTrade), the country was the second largest producer of flue-cured tobacco after the United States in the 1990s. Its crop was recognised for its quality in major tobacco markets in Europe, Asia and America.

But, since 2000 when the government introduced chaotic ‘‘land reform’’ policies, the tables have been turned. Brazil has since taken over as the world’s second largest flue-cured tobacco producer. . . .

ZTA figures show the decline in output: from 267 million kg in 2000, when the ruling ZANU-PF started to turn the screws on its political opposition, to 202 million kg in 2001; 165 million kg in 2002; 80 million kg in 2003; and a paltry 68 million kg in 2004.

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