Innovative moves needed to fight illicit cigarette trade — Salceda
A ranking lawmaker called for new approaches to fight illicit cigarette trade, which he considers as a pervasive “serious national crisis.” “We have to come up with more innovative and dynamic countermoves against illicit trade because illicit trade is the bigger evil right now. For better or for worse, our advocacy of higher taxes played a key role in making the illicit sector more attractive,” Albay 1st district Representative Joey Salceda said. “When revenue recovery helps mask the problem in 2021, 2022 figures stare us in the face with the problem becoming more undeniable — in your face,” said Salceda, who is also House Committee on Ways and Means chairman, noting that from 2021 cigarette excise tax collection of P173.9 billion, it declined to P160 billion in 2022. Citing World Bank data, he said, “Removals of cigarettes from factories declined from 4.3 billion sticks in 2019 before the implementation of Republic Act 11346 to 3.2 billion in 2020. Numbers from the World Bank also suggest that the decline in legal removals shouldn’t have been that high. Smoking prevalence only declined from 23.4% in 2019 to 23% in 2020.” Salceda then noted, “A decline of 1 billion sticks could not have been accounted for by a [smoking] incidence decline of just 0.4 percent alone. Something else happened. It is more logical to suspect that illicit trade accounted for much of the decline in licit removals.” The government stands to lose at least P60 billion in revenues. At the same time, the health cost due to smoking-related disease will go as high as P188 billion if the current trend of rampant illicit trade continues to persist in the country, Salceda said on Tuesday at the “Defend Sin Tax, Fight Illicit Trade” media forum organized by the Sin Tax Coalition to address the issue of illicit trade in the Philippines. To understand the problem more, Salceda said his staff attempted to access fake cigarettes from online channels, such as Lazada, Shopee, and Facebook Marketplace and were able to “succeed with unbelievable ease” at viewing and purchasing these illicit products. He said platforms categorized them under misleading categories like “Asian Herbs” and “T-Shirts” which allowed them to see illicit cigarettes sold out in the open at prices less than half of their licit counterparts. According to Salceda, brands like San Marino, Casablanca, Fort, and Bravo are sold on e-retailer platforms for as low as
Disclaimer : We make no assurance about the completeness and accuracy of the content of this website. All news on this website is collected from various sources hence information may or may not be true. Money Nations does not verify the reliability of the content published. We do not accept any accountability for loss or damage occurred as a result of reliability on the content of this website.