Staff Reporter :
To safeguard public health, anti-tobacco leaders have raised demand for the adoption of tobacco tax and price measures that is free from industry interference.
Each year before the formulation of national budget, tobacco industry employs a number of ill tactics to stave off any increase in tobacco taxes and prices, the leaders said in a webinar.
The webinar titled ‘Tobacco Tax and Price Measures: Industry Ill Tactics and the Needful’ was organised on Saturday with support from Campaign for Tobacco-free Kids (CTFK). Md. Hasan Shahriar, Project Head of Tobacco Control in PROGGA, made the presentation. The panel of discussants includes Md. Mostafizur Rahman, Bangladesh Lead Policy Advisor, Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids (CTFK), Md. Shafiqul Islam, Bangladesh Country Advisor, Vital Strategies, Prof. Dr. Sohel Reza Chowdhury, Dept of Epidemiology and Research, National Heart Foundation of Bangladesh, Doulat Akter Mala, Special Correspondent, the Financial Express, Iqbal Masud, Director, Health and WASH sector, Dhaka Ahsania Mission, and ABM Zubair, Executive Director, PROGGA. The webinar was also attended by representatives from different anti-tobacco organisations.
Leaders said that the industry has a set of manipulative and over-used arguments at its disposal to confuse and mislead the policymakers and mass people.
They showed that taxes of cigarettes are already too high, that tax and price increase will lead to illicit trade, cause revenue loss for government and discourage FDI, that such increase will cause mass lay-offs in bidi industry, that tobacco industry is the highest tax-paying industry.
However, according to a 2021 World Health Organisation report, Bangladesh ranks 107th among 165 countries on the basis of affordability of cigarettes (165th being the most affordable).
Even the cheapest cigarette brand in neighbouring India is more than twice as expensive when compared to that of Bangladesh.
The lack of an effective taxation policy has kept the prices of cigarettes so low over the years.
A 2019 World Bank report reveals that the percentage of illicit cigarette market in Bangladesh stands at merely 1.8 percent which is the lowest in 27 countries included in the report.
