Public Health on Top

The interference of tobacco industry to derail the tobacco taxation measures is becoming more and more intense in Bangladesh over time. The interference has managed to grow to such a concerning extent that even the budgetary decisions made by the parliament on tobacco tax measures are now being undermined to provide more benefits to tobacco companies. Tobacco taxes are getting reduced through the issuance of govt. gazette notifications which is, in reality, stepping away from the parliamentary directives on tobacco control. The strong and persistent interference of tobacco companies is the reason behind such anti-democratic and anti-public interest moves. The current fiscal year of 2019-20 has already seen such actions that continue to subvert the budgetary measures put in place to curb tobacco use. Even before the end of first fiscal quarter of 2019, the budgetary measure set by the parliament, to impose 35 percent supplementary duty on bidi has already been reduced to 30 percent by a Statutory Regulatory Order (SRO) issued by the National Board of Revenue (NBR) on 13 October 2019. The Tobacco Industry Interference Index 2019, prepared and published by PROGGA, shows the recurrence of such moves in recent time where the govt. went out of its way to protect the interest of tobacco companies. In the 2017-18 FY budget, the supplementary duty on bidi was proposed at 35 percent which was later reduced to 30 percent in the finalized budget. In June 2018, the NBR also provided British American Tobacco Bangladesh (BATB) with a massive tax exemption worth BDT 2,000 crore by issuing a special SRO. Similarly, in the proposed budget of 2018-19 FY, it was put forward that in smokeless tobacco (SLT) products, the old and less-effective ex-factory pricing system should be replaced with the modern MRP method. The govt. later retracted its position and in the finalized budget, tax on SLTs was imposed based on tariff value. According to the research report, Bangladesh is among the top three (03) countries that face the highest level of tobacco industry interference, in a long list of 33 countries. The report also maintains that since the government holds 9.48 percent share in BATB, a multinational tobacco company and 4-6 members of the Board of Directors of the company were high-level government officials, such extensive government involvement facilitated widespread and unobstructed infiltration of tobacco industry in the state mechanism and made the tobacco control measures easy prey to the industry interference. The research has also put forth recommendations to prevent tobacco companies’ interference on tobacco control that include divesting the govt. investment from tobacco companies within a specific period of time, putting an end to unnecessary interaction between the govt. and tobacco industry representatives and also finalizing the draft FCTC Article 5.3 compliant code-of-conduct for all govt. officials, interacting with tobacco companies or their representatives.