Public health experts on Thursday criticised the proposed national budget for FY2025-26, calling it anti-public health, and said the government could generate up to Tk 20,000 crore in additional revenue from the tobacco sector if it adopted recommendations from anti-tobacco advocates—potentially saving the lives of 1.7 million Bangladeshis, including nearly 900,000 youths.
Experts said this during a post-budget press conference organised by research and advocacy organization PROGGA (Knowledge for Progress) and Anti-tobacco Media Alliance (ATMA).
Citing the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS), PROGGA and ATMA said Per Capita Income (provisional) of people has increased by about 11.5 in the last one year which suggests that keeping prices unchanged will only make cigarettes more affordable and particularly encourage the youth to light up.
The proposed budget has kept the prices of bidi unchanged for the 6th consecutive time while the supplementary duty on bidi has also remained the same for the 10th consecutive time.
As the prices of and taxes on smokeless tobacco, i.e., jarda and gul, remain unchanged, the affordability of these deadly products will spike, putting the poor and the women, the majority consumer of these products, under greater health threat.
According to the Trading Corporation of Bangladesh (TCB), in the span of one year, prices of essential products have seen a considerable hike.
The average price of soybean oil (loose) has increased by 11.67 percent, miniket rice by 13.57 percent, writing paper (white) by 7.69 percent, rui fish by 7.35 percent and egg by 3.66 percent.
In contrast, the prices of tobacco products remain unchanged in the proposed budget, they said.
During the event, Syed Yusuf Saadat, Research Fellow, Centre for Policy Dialogue (CPD), said, "Since the prices of low and medium tiers are too close, it allows consumers to choose between one of the tiers. As a result, the effectiveness of any tax and price measures is not working properly."
The tax and pricing proposals by anti-tobacco groups for FY 2025-26 final budget presented during the event are as follows: The low and medium tiers should be merged into one and prices for 10 sticks of the merged tier should be set at TK 90. The retail price of high-tier cigarettes should be kept at the existing TK 140 for 10 sticks. The prices for 10 sticks of premium cigarettes should be raised to TK 190. The supplementary duty (SD) on all cigarette tiers should be the existing 67 percent.
For non-filtered bidi, the retail price should be TK 25 for 25 sticks. In the case of filtered bidi, the retail price for 20 sticks should be set at TK 20. Both prices should be followed by a 45 percent SD.
Regarding smokeless tobacco, the retail price for 10 grams of jarda and gul should be TK 55 and TK 30, followed by 60 percent SD.
The budget proposals also suggest retaining 15 percent VAT on the retail prices of tobacco products and continuing the existing 1 percent health development surcharge (HDS).