The proposed national budget for FY 2024-25, if adopted, will once again make tobacco products cheaper and more affordable, which encourages the youth to use tobacco products, increases tobacco-related deaths and illnesses, and, therefore, spikes public health expenditure for the government.
The proposed budget will cause the government to lose the opportunity to earn Tk 10,000 crore in additional revenues, said PROGGA and ATMA in a press release reacting to the national budget for the fiscal year 2024-25.
The proposed budget raises the retail prices of 10 sticks of low-tier cigarettes Tk50 from the existing Tk45. This means that the hike per stick is only Tk0.50 (11.11%). The supplementary duty has been raised by 2%, from existing 58% to 60%.
The prices of 10 sticks of medium and high- tier cigarettes are set at Tk70 from existing Tk67 and Tk120 from existing Tk113 respectively. The price of 10 sticks of premium-tier cigarettes has been raised to Tk160 from the existing Tk150. The supplementary duty (SD) in all these tiers has been raised by 0.5 percent to 65.5% from the existing 65%. On the other hand, the prices of 10 grams of jarda and gul have been raised by Tk3 (6.67%) and Tk 2 (8.7%) respectively. The SD remains unchanged. In addition, the prices and SD of bidi have seen no change at all.
To put the changes in tobacco product prices into perspective, one may consider the increases in the prices of essential commodities in recent years. According to the Department of Agricultural Marketing (DAM), the prices of essential goods such as sugar, flour, and potatoes have seen a rise ranging from 40% to 90%. On the other hand, the increases in the prices of tobacco products in the proposed budget range from 4.48% to 11.11% only, with the prices of bidi remaining unchanged. This will make tobacco products cheaper compared to essential commodities and pose a threat to public health.
Simultaneously, since the hike in the prices of tobacco products is much lower than the rise in per capita income, it will make tobacco products more affordable. According to the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS), there has been around a 12% increase in per capita income between FY 2022-23 and FY 2023-24.
It should be noted that, very recently, the 3rd report of the Tobacconomics Cigarette Tax Scorecard has revealed a grim picture of the affordability of cigarettes in Bangladesh. The Tobacconomics Cigarette Tax Scorecard is prepared based on four factors: cigarette price, change in cigarette affordability, tax share, and excise tax structure. Bangladesh scored 1.13 out of 5. The country's score in the previous report was 2.38. It is evident that the country's score nearly halved in a matter of two years, owing to the nil country score in the affordability factor. The Tobacconomics team at the Bloomberg School of Public Health under Johns Hopkins University published the report based on data from 170 countries.
In his reaction to the proposed national budget, ABM Zubair, Executive Director of PROGGA, said, 'The retail price as well as the SD imposed on the low-tier cigarettes, which hold a 75 percent market share, have seen a very negligible change. We demand that the government set the retail price at least BDT 60 and SD at 63 percent so that it reduces the affordability of cigarettes, safeguards the youth, and increases the revenue of the government manifold.'
Notably, the prevalence of tobacco use among Bangladeshi adults is 35.3 percent, and tobacco claims 161,000 lives a year in Bangladesh. The proposals of anti-tobacco activists, if realized, will prevent the premature deaths of 1.1 million people, including at least 500,000 youth.
Finance Minister Abul Hassan Mahmood Ali placed a Tk 7,96,900 crore budget for the fiscal year 2024-25 at the Parliament on Thursday (6 June).
