The Tobacco Industry and Marketing Board will carry out a final inspection of auction floors next week ahead of the opening of the 2013 tobacco marketing season. The tobacco selling season will start on February 13. TIMB chief executive, Dr Andrew Matibiri yesterday said the board had already conducted the preliminary inspections and was happy with the floors' level of preparedness.

"All the three auction floors- Boka Tobacco Floors, Premier Tobacco Floors and Tobacco Sales Floor have made various improvements including increasing the floors capacity to increase the number of sales per day," he said. Dr Matibiri said all the auction floors had adequate ablution and washing facilities, police posts, banking malls and health facilities manned by professional staff.

He said this season there were no buyers outside Harare although TIMB was still considering the Mashonaland Tobacco Company's application to buy the crop outside Harare.