About two weeks before close of the 2019/20 tobacco selling season, revenue from the crop, Malawi’s major forex earner, is projected to be lower than what the country earned last season.

Recent figures from market operator, AHL Holdings, show that by end of week 17 of tobacco sales, the country raked in $168 million, about $36.3 million shy of the $204.3 million realised during the same time last year.

This comes as market regulator, Tobacco Commission (TC), recent also said it expects the country to register a shrink in the final tobacco output for this year.

Malawi had initially planned to produce 155 million kgs of tobacco against a trade requirement of 161 million kgs.

By end of the seventeenth week of tobacco sales, about 109.7 million kgs of all types of tobacco were traded compared to 138.6 million kgs traded during a similar period last season.

Tobacco revenue dropped by 31.3 percent in the week under review to $7.8 million from $11.4 million realised during in week fifteen.