Budget FY25: academia advocate increase in taxes on tobacco items

ISLAMABAD: The call for raising taxes on tobacco is gaining momentum among academia, who Tuesday endorsed tax policy to further raise taxes on tobacco in coming budget (2024-25).

During a lecture given by Dr Zaman, the founding chairman of the Department of Sociology at Quaid-i-Azam University (QAU) and head of the Zaman Research Center on Tuesday, he underlined the need for imposing more taxes to save lives.

“Taxing tobacco saves lives by reducing consumption and channelling resources towards essential public health initiatives,” he said.

The Sustainable Development Policy Institute (SDPI) had earlier pointed out deficiencies in tax collection framework as well as the need for increasing taxes on tobacco products particularly cigarettes. The institute had published a detailed report based on government data that says that the country lost Rs567 billion in revenue during the last seven years.

The report titled “Tobacco Taxation in Pakistan: Unravelling the revenue loss of Rs567 billion to the exchequer”, has unearthed the staggering financial toll inflicted by the tobacco industry on the national exchequer.

Dr Zaman said that cigarette is a non-essential and perilous commodity. He said affordability of the cigarettes was the major contributor to high consumption and ultimately diseases and fatalists in the country. He said increasing prices of cigarettes was internationally proven strategy to curtail the consumption.

Dr Zaman endorsed the alignment of tobacco taxation with the guidelines outlined by the World Health Organization (WHO), emphasizing the imperative to develop a long-term taxation policy grounded in global best practices and Article 6 of the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC).

Malik Imran, Country Head of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, highlighted the staggering economic toll of tobacco consumption, citing an annual loss of Rs615 billion.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2024