Levy higher taxes on tobacco: campaigners
Anti-tobacco campaigners yesterday demanded higher taxes on tobacco products to reduce its consumption and health risks.
“We must prevent tobacco consumption. Otherwise, we will become a crippled nation,” said Abdul Malik, founder of National Heart Foundation of Bangladesh.
Tobacco is a major contributor to cancer, lung and heart diseases, but the tobacco companies are still growing their businesses by influencing the tax and finance authorities, said Malik.
The observations came at a press briefing at the National Press Club ahead of the budget for the next fiscal year that will be proposed in parliament next week.
The government plans to hike taxes on tobacco products, including cheap cigarettes in fiscal 2016-17. The price slab for a 10-stick pack of cigarettes may be raised to Tk 22 from Tk 18 now. Supplementary duty may also see a 2 percentage-point increase to 50 percent.
The government's earnings from tobacco account for 50 percent of what it spends for diseases caused by tobacco consumption, according to the World Health Organisation.
“Yet, tobacco prices are getting cheaper in Bangladesh,” Nadira Kiran, co-convener of Anti-Tobacco Media Alliance or ATMA, said in her keynote speech.
The prices of 5,000 tobacco sticks in 2008-09 were 1.82 percent of the per capita GDP, which went down to 1.34 percent in 2013-14, she said citing data from the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids.
Tobacco products are cheaper than daily essentials in real terms – something that inspires more tobacco consumption, she added.
According to the Global Adult Tobacco Survey, 4.13 crore adult people in Bangladesh consume tobacco. Besides, 7 percent of adolescents aged between 13 and 15 consume tobacco.
One lakh people die of tobacco-related diseases in Bangladesh a year, according to the US-based Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation.
Despite such harmful impacts, authorities are not serious enough to impose higher taxes on it, partly because of lobbying of the tobacco companies, the activists said.
Mahfuzur Rahman Bhuiyan, grant manager of CTFK, said the existing tax-structure in Bangladesh is quite complex. For example, there are price levels for cigarettes, tariff value for bidi and ex-factory prices for gul-zarda (smokeless tobacco).
“Taking advantage of such variations, tobacco companies dodge tax.”
The anti-tobacco campaigners demanded imposing 70 percent excise tax on the retail price of all types of cigarettes and non-smoking gul and zarda, 40 percent excise tax on bidis and increasing the export duty from 10 percent to 25 percent.