Zim Tobacco Deliveries Reach Highest in 8 yrs_Deliveries of tobacco by growers in Zimbabwe, the world’s sixth-biggest exporter of the flue-cured variety of the leaf, are at their highest level in eight years, the industry’s marketing board said.

Growers have delivered 109.6 million kilograms (241.6 million pounds) this year, compared with a crop estimate of 70 million kilograms, Tobacco Industry and Marketing Board Chief Executive Officer Andrew Matibiri said in a telephone interview from the capital, Harare, today.

“Deliveries are still continuing and we now believe we may sell 114 million kilograms this year,” Matibiri said.

Tobacco output has plummeted in Zimbabwe since 2000, when supporters of President Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front party seized mostly white-owned commercial tobacco farms to redistribute them to black farmers deprived of land under colonial rule.

In that year, the country exported 236 million kilograms of tobacco and was the world’s second-largest exporter after Brazil. It now ranks behind Brazil, India, the U.S., Argentina and Tanzania, according to the website of Universal Corp., the world’s biggest tobacco-leaf merchant.

Tobacco prices have averaged $2.88 per kilogram this year, compared with $2.98 at the same time last year, the marketing board’s Matibiri said. Farmers earned $316.1 million since tobacco sales began in February, compared with $173.6 million in the same period a year earlier.