Public Health on Top

The proposed tobacco taxes on the budget for 2016 -17 fiscal years will accelerate BATB’s death marketing instead of protecting the public health. Among the 14 BATB brands in the market, 10 of them belong to high and premium slabs while the proposed budget has suggested increasing only a 1 percent supplementary duty on those tiers. Considering the per capita income growth and inflation inside the country, such tax proposal is entirely unwanted. Notably, on February 4, 2016, Honorable Finance Minister asked the National Board of Revenue (NBR) to reshuffle the current tobacco tax structure and also instructed to discuss with Policy Research Institute (PRI) over the issue. Later, the NBR arranged pre-budget meeting with the PRI and based on the discussion formed the proposed taxes for high and premium slabs cigarettes in the budget of 2016 -17 fiscal years. But this is still a mysterious issue that why the Finance Minister asked to discuss tobacco taxation issue with PRI instead of many reputed public research agencies. Though PRI is reputed in some specific cases, it has been working for a multinational tobacco company British American Tobacco Bangladesh (BATB) for past few years. The PRI conducted a research commissioned by BATB over the positive impacts of tobacco farming on socio-economic grounds and published a book in 2012. The PRI budget proposal, on tobacco tax in 2015, was published as the interview of the BATB managing director in newspapers (The Daily Kalerkantho, May 18, 2015 and The Daily Jugantor on May 15, 2015). On April 15, 2016, the Finance Minister and the PRI Executive Director have participated at a talk show on a private satellite channel.It is said that the talk show was organized by BATB right before the budget. Thereby, it is quite natural that PRI tobacco tax proposals will favor BATB interests. We expected that the Finance Minister at least will consider the public health issues but instead he has instructed the NBR to discuss tobacco taxation issue with a tobacco company sponsored agency which is clearly violation of the FCTC article 5.3. Following the article 5.3, the government is instructed to take decisions without being influenced by tobacco companies.
If such favoring to the tobacco companies on tobacco tax goes on, the Prime Minister’s pledge to make Bangladesh smoke-free by 2040 will be a failure.