The volume of tobacco production in Mozambique plummeted 71.7 percent year-on-year to 200 million meticais (US$3.1 million) for the period from January to June.
The tally leaves it 2.7 percent below the target set for the year. The same period in 2023 saw 709 million meticais from tobacco production.
This precipitous drop in volume reduced the sector’s revenue to just 1 percent of all Mozambican industrial production, which totalled 73.052 billion meticais for the first six months of 2024.
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Tobacco production in Mozambique has experienced a number of ups and downs in recent years. Production in 2021 totalled 7.768 billion meticais (US$121.2 million), only to drop by 53 percent the following year to just 3.64 billion meticais. Things picked up again in 2023, jumping 23 percent to 4.475 billion meticais.
Authorities had set a target for the entire year of 2024 of 7.567 billion meticais, a figure largely in line with the high in 2021, having previously predicted the 2023 to 2024 harvest would cover an area of 129,321 hectares and produce 81,223 tons. That has since been revised down to 69,856 hectares and 43,714 tons. By the end of the first quarter of 2024, the tobacco sector had already declined 46.2 percent, emphasising the need to adjust expectations.
A 2023 report from the World Health Organisation ranked Mozambique eighth in the world in terms of area dedicated to tobacco production. They estimated the available area cultivated with tobacco at 91,469 hectares, making Mozambique the third largest in Africa after Zimbabwe (112,770 hectares) and Malawi (100,962 hectares).
