By ETimes
Investors in the Zimbabwe Stock Exchange on Wednesday recorded a gain of $6,63 billion as the market continued its bullish run for the second day in a row.
The ZSE All Share Index rose by 45.87 points, representing a gain of 0.16% to close at 29,281.09 points.
Today marks the beginning of the 2023 tobacco marketing season.
This year’s tobacco marketing season saw the first bale (tobacco) being sold at US$4.35 a kilogram, which is marginally higher than the US$4.20 a kilogram in 2022.
Vice President Constantino Chiwenga said there is a need for the tobacco industry to improve on value addition for the country to earn more foreign currency.
“Then the next thing we want to do is to ensure that there is more value addition and beneficiation. We export 98% of our tobacco in raw form, therefore, exporting jobs and value,” he said.
“Annually, we produce more than 200 million kilograms of tobacco and as it crosses the border, the same tobacco fetches US $15 billion on the international market and yet Zimbabwe only gets a billion?”
TIMB Board Chairman, Patrick Devenish said the crop was grown in an early season with good weather conditions.
“For every good thing there seems to be a pullback force and for us this season it was sporadic cases of hail and early flowering of some tobacco plants,” he said.
“Thankfully, that did not affect our national yield that much. Our crop assessment exercise reveals that we can produce 230 million kilograms of the golden leaf this season.”
At least 148,527 growers were registered doing 117,928 hectares of tobacco during the 2022/23 tobacco production season as compared to 110,155 hectares of tobacco by 122,841 growers in the previous season.
The number of new growers stood at 3.283 which shows lack of appetite to grow tobacco.
Accordingly, investors gained $6,63 billion in value as market capitalisation went up to $2.53 billion.
Market breadth closed positive as 12 stocks posted gains while 10 stocks posted declines.
The Top 10 Index shed 0.36% to close at 16,823.92 points. Ecocash shed 5.75% to close at $65.90 while OK Zimbabwe closed at $56.02, going down by 1.18%.
Econet completed the top 5, climbing by 1.76% to $178.07.
The Medium Cap Index gained the most, up 1.03% to end at 65,467.66 points. Ariston led gainers, appreciating by 11.11% to close at $11.00. Tanganda went up 10.29% to $299.64. TSL rose to $65.00, notching up 3.11% in the process. Edgars added 2.42% to end trade at $16.50.
Starafrica was the worst performing stock, declining by 6.26% to close at $1.69. Willdale fell to $3.50, losing 1.41%.
The Small Cap Index marginally gained by 0.05% to close at 678,711.57 points. General Beltings slid to $1.90 recording 1.20% depreciation.
Market turnover increased by 338.24% to $1.23 billion. Transactions in the shares of OK Zimbabwe topped the activity chart with 14,908,400 shares valued at $835,314,300.
The Datvest ETF surged by 8.60% to finish at $1.9548. On the flip side, the OML ETF eased 2.03% to close at $7.8372.
Tigere REIT was up 0.48% to finish at $47.6863 – Harare