Affordability of cigarettes in Bangladesh
Percentage of per capita GDP required to purchase 1,000 sticks of different tiers of cigarettes in Bangladesh since 2015-16 to 2017-18
As per GATS 2017 report, the number of cigarette smokers increased by 1.5 million between 2009 and 2017. The affordability of cigarettes is the major reason behind this. In an affordability analysis of different tiers of cigarettes by PROGGA (Knowledge for Progress) using Relative Income Price (RIP) method shows that in 2015-16, the purchase of 1000 sticks of medium, high and premium tier cigarettes required 4.15, 6.46 and 9.32 percent of per capita GDP respectively. However, in 2017-18, these same number of cigarettes sticks required only 3.27, 5.09 and 7.34 percent of per capita GDP respectively. The rate at the lower tier is almost the same. This suggests that the real price of cigarettes has fallen to a considerable extent over the years and the inefficient tobacco taxation has barely produced any output to reduce the number of cigarettes.