Public Health on Top

As the country is approaching the national budget for FY 2019-20, the tobacco companies have once again resorted to its dearest bugbear i.e. using the specter of illicit trade of cigarettes. With their well-crafted methods of spreading lies, tobacco company lobbyists claim that huge quantity of illicit cigarettes is entering Bangladesh from neighboring countries resulting in a gigantic revenue loss for the govt. in order to discourage the policymakers from increasing tobacco taxes on their products. According to a World Bank report titled Confronting Illicit Tobacco Trade: A Global review of Country Experiences, published in February 2019, the increase in tobacco taxes has barely any relation with illicit trade of cigarettes and the percentage of illicit trade of tobacco in Bangladesh stands at merely 1.8 percent, the lowest in 27 countries. The report also states that illicit tobacco trade constitutes 17 percent of tobacco trade in our neighboring country India, 38 percent in Pakistan, 36 percent in Malaysia and the highest 50 percent in Latvia. It should be noted that every year before budget tobacco companies, big tobacco lobbyists, and other organizations that work for the interest of the industry often attempt to frighten and confuse the policymakers with their illicit-tobacco-trade talks. What is utterly frustrating is that our policymakers often succumb to this baseless fear. Previously, in 2017, the Customs Intelligence & Investigation Directorate of National Board of Revenues (NBR) launched a week-long anti-cigarette smuggling campaign titled ‘Targeting Smuggled Cigarette’ which has later been stopped due to the strong protests from media and anti-tobacco organizations.
A 2016 World Health Organization (WHO) report analyzed the average price of a cigarette pack containing 20 cigarettes in different countries and found out that average price of cheapest cigarettes is more than twice in India than it is in Bangladesh. So, the common logic of Economics dictates that there is no scope for Bangladesh to experience the influx of smuggled cigarettes. Even if the price of tobacco products exceeds the purchasing power of the people, it would not lead to huge illicit trade of cigarettes.
As per GATS 2017 report, the number of cigarette smokers increased by 1.5 million between 2009 and 2017. The affordability of cigarettes is the major reason behind this. In an affordability analysis of different tiers of cigarettes by PROGGA (Knowledge for Progress) using Relative Income Price (RIP) method shows that in 2015-16, the purchase of 1000 sticks of medium, high and premium tier cigarettes required 4.15, 6.46 and 9.32 percent of per capita GDP respectively. However, in 2017-18, these same number of cigarettes sticks required only 3.27, 5.09 and 7.34 percent of per capita GDP respectively. This suggests that the real price of cigarettes has fallen to a considerable extent over the years and the inefficient tobacco taxation has barely produced any output to reduce the number of cigarettes. Effective tobacco taxation works as a magical amulet that safeguards public health. So what we hope is that the NBR will free itself from the influence of tobacco companies, adopt measures necessary for effective taxation of tobacco products in the upcoming budget and contribute to the making of tobacco-free Bangladesh by 2040, as declared by the Honorable PM.