Tag: Bangladesh

  • Export tax withdrawn

    Export tax withdrawn

    Bangladesh’s National Board of Revenue (NBR) has withdrawn tobacco-product export-duty in respect of factories located within the country’s export processing zones (EPZ), sparking criticisms among anti-tobacco campaigners, according to a story in The New Age.

    The board has issued a statutory regulatory order withdrawing the 25 per cent tax, which was imposed in the budget for the current fiscal year, 2017-2018, on the export of tobacco products such as cigarettes, cigars, cheroots, cigarillos, water pipe tobacco, and homogenized and reconstituted tobacco.

    The exemption will come into force retrospectively from July 1, 2017.

    Officials at the board said they had taken the decision to withdraw the tax in line with the EPZA Act which said exports by the factories located at EPZs would be tax free.

    Bangladesh has eight EPZs.

    Meanwhile, anti-tobacco campaigner A.B.M. Zubair, executive director of Proggra, said the NBR exempted tobacco export tax for EPZ companies at a time when the government had been taking various steps to discourage tobacco cultivation and the consumption of tobacco products.

    But export tax exemption for tobacco products would encourage tobacco cultivation in the country, which would be negative as far as public health and food security were concerned, he said.

    Zubair added that tobacco companies should not be allowed to operate in the EPZs.

  • No urgency to health plans

    No urgency to health plans

    The proceeds of a health development surcharge on tobacco companies in Bangladesh, Tk 9 billion, has been unused during the past three fiscal years due to a lack of a specific guidelines for spending the revenue, according to a story in The Financial Express.

    In that time, 2014-15, 2015-16 and 2016-17, the government failed to use the money for campaigning against tobacco consumption.

    This was said to be due to the slow pace of approval and implementation of the Health Ministry’s Health Development Surcharge Management Policy.

    A draft of the policy was approved at an inter-ministerial meeting on February 15 and it is scheduled to go before the cabinet this month.

    An official at the Health Ministry was quoted as saying that the surcharge revenue could be used by the ministry’s National Tobacco Control Cell to execute a national tobacco control program that would ‘rehabilitate’ tobacco-users, create alternative jobs for tobacco farmers and ensure overall health development.

    It has taken a long time to get to this point. The government imposed the surcharge in the budget for the financial year 2014-15.

    But it wasn’t until January 2016, and then only at the South Asian Speakers’ conference, that the Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina instructed the authorities to adopt a national tobacco control program with the revenue from the surcharge.

    Following the instruction, the ministry of health framed the draft surcharge policy and sought the opinions of nine relevant ministries including those of finance, agriculture and industries.

    The health ministry published the draft on its website in December 2016 for public opinion.

  • Bidis to be phased out

    Bidis to be phased out

    Bangladesh’s Finance Minister A.M.A. Muhith has vowed to phase out bidis and cheap cigarettes, which he says make up 80 percent of the country’s tobacco-products market, according to a bdnews24.com story.

    “We have decided along with some of the bidiwalas [the owners of bidi factories] that bidi will be out of Bangladesh,” he told reporters after a meeting with representatives of tobacco companies at his office on Sunday.

    In answer to a question, Muhith said the departure of bidis from the market would not affect government revenues significantly.

    The announcement seems to have been made possible partly because pressure from politicians seeking the retention of the bidi industry had eased this year. “I received a number of letters in this regard last year,” Muhith said. “I’ve got only two to four this year.”

    It seems also to be partly about accepting the inevitable. The News24 report said that market share analysis of low-segment cigarettes for the past few years suggested that domestic cigarette manufacturers were gradually losing their share of the market to multinational companies.

    If this trend continued for another two years, the domestic companies would be eliminated from the market, Muhith said.

    The brands marketed by multinational companies in the low segment were the top and popular brands in other countries. This had created uneven competition in the market.

  • Warnings on top

    Warnings on top

    The government of Bangladesh has ordered tobacco companies to print graphic health warnings on the upper half of the front and back of the tobacco packs from Sept. 19.

    The Section 10 of the tobacco control law makes it mandatory to print graphic warnings covering 50 percent upper space of packs.

    At the request of the Bangladesh Cigarette Manufacturers’ Association (BCMA), the law ministry had granted temporary permission to print the warning on the lower half of the pack instead.

    Following a legal challenge by anti-tobacco organizations, the temporary permission was withdrawn. The health groups insist on printing graphic warnings on the upper half as it draws more attention.

    Nearly 45 percent of Bangladeshis aged 15 and above consume tobacco in some form.

  • Bangladeshi children smoking

    Bangladeshi children smoking

    Forty percent of school children in Bangladesh smoke their first cigarette before they are 10 years of age, according to a story in The Financial Express citing the results of a new study.

    Three thousand one hundred and thirteen students at 52 schools were said to have participated in the study entitled, ‘Prevalence of tobacco use and its contributing factors among adolescents in Bangladesh: Results from a population-based study’.

    The study was conducted in 2016 by Sheikh Mohammed Shariful Islam, AKM Mainuddin and Faiz Ahmed Bhuiyan of the International Center for Diarrhoeal Disease Research and Kamrun Nahar Chowdhury of the National Center for Control of Rheumatic Fever and Heart Disease, Dhaka.

    The study revealed that nine percent of students reported that they had ‘smoked cigarettes’, where smoking cigarettes was taken to include those who had ever taken one or two puffs.

    Within the overall smoking incidence, smoking was more prevalent among boys (15.8 percent) than it was among girls (4.8 percent)

    Two percent of the students questioned were said to be current cigarette smokers, while six percent used other tobacco products.

    One percent of students reported that they felt like having a cigarette first thing in the morning.

    About 70 percent of current student smokers reported that they wanted to stop smoking, while more than 85 percent had tried but failed to stop smoking during the past. Ninety percent said they had not received help to quit smoking.

    According to the results of the study, almost 38 percent of current smokers buy cigarettes from retailers, and almost none of those reported being refused cigarettes because of their age.

    About 10 percent of students were said to have been offered free cigarettes by a tobacco company representative and about five per cent of students usually smoke at home.

    The researchers said that current tobacco control programs needed to be strengthened and expanded if tobacco-attributed morbidity and mortality was to be reduced.

  • Income surcharge proposed

    Income surcharge proposed

    The government of Bangladesh is set to impose a 2.5 percent surcharge on the incomes of the manufacturers of tobacco products, including cigarettes, bidis, zarda and gul, according to a story in The New Nation.

    This was one of the proposals put forward when the Finance Minister AMA Muhith made his budget speech for the fiscal year 2017-18 on Thursday.

    In respect of packs of 10 low-segment cigarettes, Muhith proposed to increase the minimum price from Tk 23 to Tk27 and the supplementary duty rate from 50 percent to 52 percent.

    And in respect of packs of 10 ‘foreign-branded’ cigarettes he proposed setting the minimum price at Tk35 and the supplementary duty rate at 55 percent.

    However, the government is not increasing prices or supplementary duty rates for medium- and high-segment cigarettes that are currently sold at Tk45 and above.

    Muhith proposed to fix the tax-inclusive price of packs of 25 non-filter bidis at Tk15 and that of packs of 20 filter bidis at Tk15. The existing supplementary duty rates for non-filter and filter bidis will remain unchanged at 30 percent and 35 percent respectively.

    Cigarettes, bidis and other tobacco products were injurious to health, and the government and society incurred additional ‘medicare’ costs due to the consumption of these products, Muhith said.

    Therefore, high rates of duties were imposed on tobacco and tobacco production, and this year the government would impose a 25 percent export duty on these items with a view to discouraging their production and consumption, he added.

  • Taxing harm reduction

    Taxing harm reduction

    Bangladesh’s budget for the upcoming fiscal year is expected to bring bad news for electronic cigarette users, according to a story in The Dhaka Tribune.

    The newspaper said the government was planning to raise duties on the import of these products and e-liquids.

    The Finance Minister A.M.A. Muhith is said to have proposed raising customs duties on both e-cigarettes and e-liquids to 25 percent from the existing 10 percent.

    He is said to have proposed also the imposition of a new 100 percent supplementary duty on these two items.

    According to the minister, the duty hike was being proposed because e-cigarettes, like bidis and cigarettes, were hazardous to health.

    “The use of e-cigarettes is increasing day by day as it has become very popular among the young smokers from comparatively wealthy families,” Muhith said in his budget speech on Thursday.

  • Health funds unused

    Health funds unused

    A health development surcharge collected on all tobacco products in Bangladesh has remained unused, though nearly three years have passed since the government levied it, according to a story in The Daily Star.

    The government imposed a one percent surcharge on all domestic and imported tobacco products from fiscal 2014-15, with the proceeds to be used for ‘treatment and rehabilitation of tobacco disease-stricken people’.

    Since then, revenue officials have collected more than Tk6,000 million in surcharges, mainly from cigarette manufacturers, according to the National Board of Revenue.

    However, delays in framing the Health Development Surcharge Management Policy have held up the use of the funds.

    But there are signs of movement. Recently, the health and family welfare ministry prepared a final draft of the policy, which is due to be placed before the cabinet for approval.

    Preparation of the policy draft was said to have been held up because of delays in getting opinions and recommendations from all the stakeholders involved.

    And this delay has had consequences. “We could have used the money to control tobacco usage had we gotten the budget earlier,” a senior health ministry official was quoted as saying.

  • Farm worker abuses alleged

    Farm worker abuses alleged

    Leaders of the Farm Labor Organizing Committee (FLOC) reportedly challenged British American Tobacco during its Annual General Meeting (AGM) in London last week over what FLOC described as human rights abuses on BAT contract farms.

    In a note on its website, FLOC said that BAT, which was planning to pay US$49 billion to acquire the rest of Reynolds American, was asked about its failure ‘to be transparent and take concrete action despite numerous reports detailing human rights abuses’ on its contract farms.

    This year was said to have marked the seventh year that FLOC had attended the shareholders meeting.

    ‘During the 2014 AGM, BAT chairman Richard Burrows claimed that there were no labor or human rights violations in the BAT supply chain,’ the note said.

    ‘Since then, independent research groups including SwedWatch and Human Rights Watch have published reports detailing serious human rights abuses on BAT contract farms in Bangladesh and Indonesia respectively, echoing what FLOC has been reporting for years from the fields of North Carolina.

    ‘In BAT’s own corporate audit report, they admitted instances of worker death by heat stroke, workers being sprayed by pesticides, and poor housing conditions, among other issues.’

    After the meeting, FLOC leaders were said to have met directly with BAT executives to discuss the issues and ‘real solutions’ in more depth.

    But FLOC said that while BAT had stated that it had wanted to work with FLOC to resolve issues in the BAT supply chain, human rights violations would continue until BAT agreed ‘to guarantee freedom of association and implement a practical mechanism that allows farmworkers to denounce abuses and act as their own auditors!’

    The note is at: http://www.floc.com/wordpress/floc-speaks-out-against-abuses-in-bat-supply-chain/

  • Less than graphic warnings

    bangladesh photo
    Photo by BatulTheGreat

    One year after rules on the printing of graphic health warnings on tobacco packs became mandatory, a study in Bangladesh has found that most tobacco companies are still flouting the law, according to a bdnews24.com story.

    The tobacco industry had rather resorted to fresh tactics to undermine the implementation of the law, said anti-tobacco group Progga, which was involved in the study.

    “The government needs to strengthen the National Tobacco Control Cell so that they can monitor the market effectively,” Progga executive director ABM Zubair told bdnews24.com.

    The law on graphic health warnings was passed in parliament in April 2013, but it took 22 months to adopt the implementation rules mostly due to industry pressure. Then again, it took a year to implement the graphic health warnings.

    The law came into force on March 19 last year.

    The study found that 51 percent of tobacco products did not obey the law, and that the overwhelming number of tobacco producers were selling products that didn’t fully comply with the graphic health warning guidelines.

    Zubair said the health ministry had provided seven rules on the printing of the warnings and not obeying any one of them could lessen the impact.

    For example, he said, the picture had to be clear so that the devastating images of injuries could draw attention to all, even those who could not read. “But if you print a grainy photo, then they will not understand it,” he said. “It will reduce the impact”.

    Zubair said the manufacturers of local hand-rolled cigarettes such as bidis and smokeless tobacco such as ‘jorda’, which were packed in round or cylindrical packs, were taking advantage of the fact that pictures could not be displayed properly on such packs.