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Principal Secretary in the Ministry of Agriculture responsible for technical services Medrina Mloza Banda has said tobacco industry is critical to the national economic growth hence the need to join hands in protecting the integrity of tobacco.
Speaking during the official opening of the 2023 tobacco industry conference, in Lilongwe on Friday, Mloza Banda said high quality management on tobacco is significant because it helps the tobacco leaf to be attractive at the global market thereby offering competitive prices.
“We believe that high quality management will help all stakeholders not only to track and trace our tobacco, but guide minimum performance levels that are expected of our tobacco leaf suppliers in areas such as sustainable agriculture, environmental management and human rights. Ultimately, this will make our tobacco compliant with international standards.” She said.
Muloza further said government is consulting all stakeholders in tobacco industry on how dangers brought by climate change can be alleviated.
“In collaboration with Tobacco Commission (TC), government is also consulting stakeholders on how best to mitigate change shocks which have lately become a pain in the industry. While the consultations continue, government is already spearheading irrigation initiatives which we are confident will be widespread across the country,” she said.
In his remarks, Chief Executive Officer for TC Joseph Chidanti Malunga said despite projecting that there is an increase in tobacco production this year, the demand for the crop at the global market remains high.
“This year, we have increased the volume of tobacco and the numbers have already shown.
As you know we started with registering licenses and our figures are showing 250 million Killogrammes of tobacco. So we hope if we grow more, we might add more than what we did last year,” Malunga said.
Malunga also urged the public to refrain from negativity associated with tobacco industry saying they should join the tobacco industry because Malawi’s economy depend much on tobacco for economic growth.
