Singapore taxes up

The Singapore government has imposed a 10 percent increase on tobacco excise duty, Finance Minister Heng Swee Keat said during his Budget speech yesterday.
According to a story by Monica Kotwani for Channel NewsAsia, Heng said the higher excise duty would be implemented across all tobacco products with immediate effect – from February 19.
The Singapore Customs’ website indicates that cigars, cheroots and cigarillos were taxed at S$388 per kilo; so this will have increased to S$427 from yesterday.
The excise duties on cigarettes containing tobacco and cigarettes with tobacco substitutes has increased to almost 43 cents per gram.
Kotwani quoted the World Health Organization as saying that a 10 percent increase in the price of cigarettes resulted in a four percent decrease in demand in high-income countries, and about a five percent decrease in demand in low- and middle-income countries.