{"id":1799,"date":"2011-05-09T12:44:16","date_gmt":"2011-05-09T12:44:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.faceofmalawi.com\/?p=1799"},"modified":"2011-05-09T12:44:16","modified_gmt":"2011-05-09T12:44:16","slug":"malawis-president-mutharika-accuses-tobacco-buyers-of-sabotaging-economy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/2011\/05\/09\/malawis-president-mutharika-accuses-tobacco-buyers-of-sabotaging-economy\/","title":{"rendered":"Malawi\u2019s President Mutharika Accuses Tobacco Buyers of Sabotaging Economy"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Frank Jomo<\/p>\n

Malawi President Bingu wa Mutharika accused tobacco buyers of trying to sabotage the southern African nation\u2019s economy by rejecting good-quality leaves and offering low prices.<\/p>\n

The government will keep pushing for buyers to meet its minimum prices for tobacco, Mutharika said in a speech today at the opening of an auction in Mzuzu, in northern Malawi, broadcast on state TV. Buyers have rejected more than half of the leaves on offer since the selling season officially started on March 14, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe crop is of national importance and if you reject 70 percent of the crop, what do you want to do?\u201d he said. \u201cKill the economy? Do you want to sabotage this economy?\u201d<\/p>\n

The average price of tobacco in Malawi, the world\u2019s largest producer of the burley variety, fell 57 percent below the government set price of $1.80 per kilogram (2.2 pounds) in the week to March 25, the country\u2019s central bank said April 11. Sales were 80 percent lower in the first five weeks of the season compared with a year earlier, the Daily Times reported April 20, citing the Tobacco Control Commission.<\/p>\n

Mutharika backed down on a March 15 threat to deport buyers for offering low prices. \u201cI will not deport you, I hope you will change,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Tobacco is Malawi\u2019s biggest foreign-exchange earner, accounting for 60 percent of all revenue earned from abroad. Burley tobacco is a lower-grade variety of the leaf used to fill cigarettes flavored with higher-grade flue-cured tobacco.<\/p>\n

To contact the reporter on this story: Frank Jomo in Blantyre at fjomo@bloomberg.net<\/p>\n

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Antony Sguazzin at asguazzin@bloomberg.net\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Frank Jomo Malawi President Bingu wa Mutharika accused tobacco buyers of trying to sabotage the southern African nation\u2019s economy […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1800,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[230,207],"tags":[277,278,200],"class_list":["post-1799","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-agriculture","category-business-2","tag-economics-2","tag-finance","tag-tobacco"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1799","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1799"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1799\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1799"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1799"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1799"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}