The country's apex revenue body, National Board of Revenue (NBR), must play a vital role in strengthening tobacco control law and adopting robust tobacco tax measures to both improve public health and increase revenue earnings.

A delegation from research and advocacy organization PROGGA (Knowledge for Progress) and Anti-Tobacco Media Alliance (ATMA) said this during a meeting with NBR Chairman Md. Abdur Rahman Khan FCMA that took place today (10 December 2024, Tuesday) at NBR Office.

During the meeting, the NBR Chair said, "I want to thank PROGGA-ATMA in particular because almost all of my stakeholders usually demand tax reduction whereas these two organizations are raising demands for tax hike. All of your reform proposals are reasonable. We will take these into consideration while formulating the national budget. I will also do the needful to facilitate the amendment of the tobacco control law."

The high prevalence of tobacco use claims nearly 161,000 lives each year in Bangladesh. As tobacco-related deaths and diseases grow higher in number, so does the government's expenditure in the health sector.

During the discussion, speakers presented a number of demands to safeguard public health and increase government revenue earnings. The demands include raising prices of cigarettes in accordance with inflation and rise in per capita income, replacing the multi-tiered ad valorem tax system in cigarettes with uniform specific or mixed (specific and ad valorem) taxation, and hiking the supplementary duty on low-tier cigarettes to at least 70 percent.

Discussants also shed light on different aspects of the Health Ministry's initiative to amend and strengthen tobacco control law. Citing NBR data, speakers argued that strengthening tobacco control law has no impact on revenue loss from the tobacco sector.

For example, following the passage of the first tobacco control law in 2005, revenue earned from the cigarette sector increased by 17.97 percent and 37.52 percent in FY 2005-06 and FY 2006-07 respectively. Similarly, following the 2013 amendment of the tobacco control law, revenue earned from the cigarette sector jumped by 25.51 percent and 46.52 percent in FY 2013-14 and FY 2014-15 respectively. NBR must not allow itself to get misled by tobacco industry's ill tactics and provide all assistance necessary to ensure a smooth and speedy passage of the draft amendment.

The delegation attending the meeting include Professor Dr. Sohel Reza Chowdhury, Head of the Department of Epidemiology and Research, National Heart Foundation Hospital and Research Institute; Mortuza Haider Liton, ATMA convener; Nadira Kiron and Mizan Chowdhury, both co-convener of ATMA; ABM Zubair, Executive Director, PROGGA, and Md. Hasan Shahriar, Head of Programs, PROGGA.