DE Online Desk:
Finance Minister AH Mahmood Ali has proposed increasing the price of tobacco products in the first budget of the 12th Parliament.
“Cigarette is outright harmful for human health. In order to reduce the consumption of tobacco and such kinds of products and to increase revenue from this sector, I propose to fix supplementary duty at 66% instead of 65% on cigarettes,” he said in his budget speech for the 2024-25 fiscal year on Thursday (June 6).
The minister recommended increasing the price level of low slab 10-sticks/pack cigarettes to Tk 50 and higher and supplementary duty to 60 percent.
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He also suggested raising the price level of medium slab 10-stick/pack cigarettes to Tk 70 and higher, high slab to Tk 120 and higher, and the premium slab to Tk 160 and higher, and the rate of supplementary duty for these three slabs to 65.5 percent.
Ali proposed keeping the market retail price of non-filtered 25-stick/pack bidi at Tk 18, 12-stick/pack bidi at Tk 9 and 8-stick/pack bidi at Tk 6 and 30 percent supplementary duty for all unchanged.
He recommended continuing the existing price of filtered 20-stick/pack bidi at Tk 19, 10-stick/pack bidi Tk 10 and supplementary duty at 40 percent for all.
He proposed continuing the supplementary duty at 55 percent with an increase in the maximum retail price of Jarda to Tk 48 per 10 grams and the maximum retail price of Gul to Tk 25 per 10 grams.
More than 161,000 people die every year in the country due to tobacco-related diseases as per the factsheet of 2018 compiled by the South Asian regional office of the World Health Organization (WHO).
