Agriculture Minister Allan Chiyembekeza distanced his country from World Health Organisation efforts to get farmers to switch from growing tobacco to other crops, promising continued government support to growers, the Nyasa Times said.

"Tobacco production sustains the livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of people and farmers,” Chiyembekeza reportedly told a meeting in Lilongwe called to provide input for the Malawi position at the next plenary session of the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) later this year in India. Malawi is a major burley producer, and provides about 60 per cent of the country’s foreign exchange earnings.
Chiyembekeza said tobacco is cheaper to produce than the next best alternatives, and that switching would require unrealistically high investments, the online news service said.