Tobacco exporters lost USD 57 million due to side marketing last year, the Tobacco Industry and Marketing Board (TIMB) has said, reports News Day Zimbabwe.

Side-marketing is a form of contract default whereby contracted tobacco growers sell their tobacco to third parties in breach of a contractual agreement that tobacco can only be sold to or bought from the contractor who provided inputs to the grower (see TJI 03/22).
“This year, 2022, the Tobacco Industry and Marketing Board is on an accelerated drive to end tobacco side-marketing. This criminal practice is responsible for the loss of millions of dollars annually and has the potential to kill the tobacco industry,” the TIMB said in a latest article published on its website. “TIMB cannot accurately ascertain how much is lost annually since side-marketing is an illegal activity whose statistics cannot be accurately ascertained. However, in 2021 alone five exporters lost USD 57 million as a result of several factors and chief among them being side marketing,” it said.
Tobacco sales in Zimbabwe have traditionally been done exclusively through auction whereby tobacco producers mobilised the necessary cultivation resources themselves and took their crop to an auction floor of their choice and the highest bidding buyer secured the commodity. From the 2004 selling season onwards, however, this system was changed with the introduction of contract farming and contract marketing of tobacco.