This article was originally published on Malawi24 ">Malawi24, Malawi's #1 independent news platform. Tobacco Commission (TC) has announced that Malawi’s 2026 tobacco marketing season will close next week. The season will officially end on Thursday, September 10, bringing 21 weeks of trading across the country’s four tobacco markets. The Commission said the decision follows an industry assessment which found that tobacco deliveries to the markets had declined significantly, […] Read the full arti
Tobacco Commission (TC) has announced that Malawi’s 2026 tobacco marketing season will close next week.
The season will officially end on Thursday, September 10, bringing 21 weeks of trading across the country’s four tobacco markets.
The Commission said the decision follows an industry assessment which found that tobacco deliveries to the markets had declined significantly, indicating that most of the crop had already been sold.
Farmers and buyers now have until September 10 to complete their transactions before the markets officially close.
However, the season is ending on a weaker financial note, with Malawi earning K489.5 billion from tobacco sales in the first 19 weeks, representing a K377.6 billion drop from the K867.1 billion recorded during the same period last year.
The latest figures from the Commission show that the decline has been driven by both lower sales volumes and falling prices.
By the end of the 19th week, farmers had sold 142.4 million kilogrammes of tobacco, down from 197.2 million kilogrammes during the same period in 2025.
In US dollar terms, earnings stood at US$282.5 million, compared with US$500.4 million recorded last year.
The average price also fell sharply from US$2.54 per kilogramme last year to US$1.98 per kilogramme this season.
Based on the exchange rate used in the Commission’s figures, this translates to an average of about K3,431 per kilogramme, compared with approximately K4,402 per kilogramme during the corresponding period last year.
