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Roundtable Discussion on Tobacco Taxation
in the National Budget 2009-10 ; 16.09.09

The roundtable discussion on “Tobacco Taxation in the National Budget 2009-10” was a successful step for the PATT project as well as for all other anti-tobacco organizations in Bangladesh. There are some important issues have been discussed in the discussion which helped us to understand the current situation of tobacco taxation policy in Bangladesh and what should be done in future to accomplish our goal of raising tobacco price and consequently decreasing consumption level. At the beginning, Md. Zulfikar Ali has described proposed tax policies to the Government before the budget 2009-10 and the extent of post budget implementation of those policies. Md. Jamil Osman has given a through description of current tax strategies for cigarette and proven the importance of taxing lower priced cigarettes. Dr. Arup Ratan Chowdhury has shown a vivid picture of how tobacco is reducing both human life span and productivity level in the world with some fearsome statistics. Md. Hafiz Uddin Khan emphasized on motivation and awareness of anti-tobacco alliances so that they all can work together to enforce the amendments. Besides these, there are many other discussants in the roundtable who provided their important suggestions of how to improve our strategies to implement our policies in next budgetary plan.

The overall purpose of the roundtable discussion is to influence the policy makers in Bangladesh to formulate effective tobacco taxation policy and therefore indirectly impact on tobacco pricing as part of comprehensive tobacco control measures. The main objectives of this roundtable discussion are:

 To strengthen implementation of Tobacco Policy Act 2005
 To identify barriers to increase taxing Tobacco in Bangladesh
 To share experience and gather socio-political momentum in favor of a Tobacco Free world.


Open Discussion:
What are the current obstacles:

  1. Saifuddin Ahmed, the Executive Director of WBB trust stated that there are many anti-tobacco organizations who do not have sufficient knowledge about tobacco taxation issues.  For this reason, their advocacy at different social level is not that strong either.
  2. He further mentioned about lacking in joint action plan among organizations.
  3.  According to Nayeemul Islam Khan, Editor of Daily Amader Shomoy absence of political parties’ assertion in tobacco control advocacy program is a major drawback to influence common people to stop using tobacco.
  4. Dr. Mahfuz, WHO Project Officer for NMH, has said that there is not enough diversification in media campaign. This is one of the major reasons for lack of social awareness of tobacco use. He further agreed with Jamil Osman’s proposals of raising price of lower brands cigarettes. 
  5. Hasan Shahriar, Executive Director of Environmental and Social Development Organisation (ESDO) said that there is no significant development in health education both in urban areas and rural places. A survey performed in Dhaka University has shown that the prevalence rate of tobacco usage among male population is 41% and among female population is 21%.
Furthermore, a student of Dhaka University has stated that there is no anti-tobacco advertisement in university campus. In addition to this, campaign from cigarette companies are a lot stronger in university campus. For example, the British American Tobacco Company (BATC) visits the campus often to influence students for applying for jobs with various lucrative offers.
 
What can be done:
  •  Building alliances and network among all the social levels and policy makers is necessary for the
        implementation advocacy policies.
  •  Rigorous research must be done to give government officials a comprehensive picture of how actually
        high taxation on tobacco products has a net positive effect in government economic performance.
  •  Make anti tobacco movement more collective and comprehensive in future.
  •  Make news in media more interesting to target specific audiences. Such as different advertisement for
        different age groups.
  •  Social awareness about anti-tobacco smoking has to be increased in grass root levels.
  •  Proper initiative needs to be taken to amend and enforce the anti tobacco law 2005.
  •  The advocacy groups should strengthen direct lobbying.

 

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