Focusing on tobacco in the Philippines but keeping a wary eye on illicit trade

The Philippines-based LT Group is to look to its core businesses of tobacco and liquor for further growth, according to a story in The Philippine Star.

“We will focus on our core business and fully capitalize on our market leadership position to benefit from the strong demand in growth in consumer-focused businesses,” the group’s president, Michael G. Tan, told reporters yesterday.

Non-core businesses, such as Philippines Airlines, would end up on the selling block, he added.

Not that everything in the tobacco business is as Tan would like it, according to a story in the Inquirer.

Next to oil smuggling, the illicit trade of cigarettes had become a key concern of the Philippines, with the government set to lose a potential revenue of P8 billion this year, he said.

Speaking yesterday to reporters after the annual stockholders meeting of LTG, Tan said the underground domestic manufacturing of cigarettes and the smuggling of products from abroad had been fueling the illegal trade in cigarettes.

And in other Asian countries, he added, the illegal tobacco trade had grown to “astronomical proportions”.
LTG is a key partner in the country’s leading cigarette-maker Philip Morris Fortune Tobacco Corp.