Figures from the Tobacco Commission (TC) now show that the green gold has made $77.3 million in eight weeks since the market opened.

In week eight during the market last year, the sales were 37% higher, registering at $122,631,998.07 (about K92 billion) as the volume traded is 27 percent lower than the 74,591,656 kg sold in the same period last year.

TC Chief Executive Officer, Kaisi Sadala, explained that the figures were so, due to lower volume of flue cured tobacco on the market. The mentioned factor by Sadala follows other low sales factors such as poor grading, poor quality and the most worrisome factor; lower demand by the buyers. Market demand has gone down to 151 million kg against 205 million kgs that tobacco farmers have produced.

However, the Tobacco Commission CEO remained positive about the market. “We expect the trend to normalize because we expect more flue cured tobacco to be sold. You might also notice that trading was mostly done on auction market, where, basically, prices are lower than on contract market, so we expect traded volume to pick up as well as the revenue” he said.