Egypt tobacco buyers survey Malawi tobacco
A seven-member delegation from Egypt arrived in the country Sunday for a tobacco market-orientation visit, the Tobacco Control Commission (TCC) has confirmed.
The visit, according to TCC chief executive officer Bruce Munthali, follows a tobacco promotional trip which a Malawi delegation embarked on earlier in February this year.
The Malawi delegation tour targeted Egypt, United Arab Emirates (UAE) and the People’s Republic of China.
Munthali said the seven-member team comprises officials from the Eastern Tobacco Company of Egypt, accompanied by brokers or agents.
“They will be in the country until the first week of May [2014] and they will visit tobacco factories, among others places, before looking into the possibilities of buying our tobacco,” he said.
Munthali described the visit as timely, saying currently Malawi is exploring new tobacco markets as a way of inducing competition for the Malawi green-gold.
He said the delagation’s interest is on burley tobacco-grown by a majority of smallholder farmers-as well as dark-fired tobacco.
He said it was worrying for the country to see the customer base for dark-fired tobacco tumbling but sounded optimistic that the demand would pick up.
“We met with them [the visiting team] in Egypt and we had fruitful talks with them. And some of them are looking at possibilities of investing in cigarette manufacturing and we also want to increase orders for Malawi tobacco,” he added.
He said some of the companies are also interested to partner with local companies in venturing into cigarette manufacturing.
Malawi currently has only one cigarette manufacturing company, Nyasa Manufacturing, a company which produces cigarette at small scale but is in the process of partnering with the government in a public private partnership arrangement which is expected scaling up its production.
Last year, the country sold 168.6 million kilograms of tobacco as compared to 80 million kilograms sold in 2012, representing a 111 percent increase.
According to available statistics, tobacco-although facing external negative shocks such as the anti-tobacco smoking campaign-is employing 12 percent of Malawi population and also contributing 13 percent of Malawi Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
