MALAWI’S revenues from tobacco, the nation’s top foreign currency earner, are expected to drop 13% this year. Projected earnings from the 2001 crop are $143-million, 13% less than in 2000 and 23% less than in 1999, said Godfrey Chapola, general manager the parastatal Tobacco Control Commission (TCC). Chapola blamed the drop in earnings on smaller crops planted by the country’s 100 000 tobacco farmers. The reasons for the drop are to be discussed at a national conference on tobacco next month, aimed at charting the way forward for the industry, the nation’s largest employer, he said. Tobacco, called “green gold” here, contributes up to 75% of foreign exchange earnings in this impoverished southern African state. But Malawi’s tobacco industry has suffered from weak prices in recent years and the success of the global anti-smoking campaign. – AFP