To safeguard public health, anti-tobacco leaders have raised demand for the adoption of tobacco tax and price measures that is free from industry interference.
Each year before the formulation of national budget, tobacco industry employs a number of ill tactics to stave off any increase in tobacco taxes and prices.
The industry also has a set of manipulative and over-used arguments at its disposal to confuse and mislead the policymakers and mass people: that taxes of cigarettes are already too high, that tax and price increase will lead to illicit trade, cause revenue loss for govt. and discourage FDI, that such increase will cause mass lay-offs in bidi industry, that tobacco industry is the highest tax-paying industry.
A 2019 World Bank report reveals that the percentage of illicit cigarette market in Bangladesh stands at merely 1.8 percent which is the lowest in 27 countries included in the report.
The webinar titled 'Tobacco Tax and Price Measures: Industry Ill Tactics and the Needful' was organized on Saturday with support from Campaign for Tobacco-free Kids (CTFK). Md. Hasan Shahriar, Project Head of Tobacco Control in PROGGA, made the presentation.