Decline predicted

The Russian cigarette market will likely decline by 30 percent to 182 billion units between 2017 and 2022, due to cigarette excise tax hikes and the growth of alternative products, according to Euromonitor International. In terms of value, the market is predicted to shrink by 11 percent to RUB1.39 trillion ($20.6 billion) during that period.
Russians are increasingly pursuing healthy lifestyles. The share of smokers willing to quit increasing from 57 percent to 70 percent, while the share of regularly exercising Russians was up from 12 percent in 2016 to 31 percent in 2017, according to the estimates.
Euromonitor estimated that the share of illegal cigarettes rose 0.6 percentage points to 4.6 percent of the overall market during the period. Local analysts estimated that the share of black market stood at 7.7 percent, with the share reaching as much as 30 percent in regions bordering Belarus and Kazakhstan.
The illegal tobacco market grew seven-fold in the past four years, with the state losing about RUB50 billion in excise taxes in 2018 alone.