The proposed 2026-27 budget raises the price of low-tier cigarettes only marginally and leaves the prices and tax rates of bidi, gul and jorda unchanged — meaning the real price of these tobacco products will fall once inflation and rising per-capita income are accounted for. No reform has been made to the tax structure, such as reducing the number of cigarette price tiers or introducing a specific duty. If the proposed budget passes, tobacco use and tobacco-related illness and death will rise and the government will forgo a chance to raise revenue, according to the research and advocacy organisation PROGGA (Knowledge for Progress) and the Anti-Tobacco Media Alliance (ATMA).
The proposed budget raises the price of a 10-stick pack of low-tier cigarettes by 2 taka to 62 taka. Once the budget takes effect, the price in this tier will rise just 3.33 percent — far below the 10.27 percent rise in per-capita income — so the real price of low-tier cigarettes will fall sharply, and use of cheap cigarettes among young and low-income people will rise alarmingly. Low-tier cigarettes currently hold about 75 percent of the cigarette market, their main consumers the poor and the young. The proposed budget sets the 10-stick price at 92 taka for the medium tier (up from 80, a 15 percent rise), 160 taka for the high tier (from 140, 14.29 percent) and 210 taka for the premium tier (from 185, 13.51 percent) — increases very small compared with the rise in essential prices. With no reform to the tax structure, a significant part of the higher price will go into companies’ pockets and the extra profit will be used to expand the tobacco business, a threat to public health.
According to PROGGA and ATMA, the anti-tobacco proposal — merging the low and medium cigarette tiers at a 100-taka retail price per 10 sticks, introducing a specific tax (a 4-taka specific duty per 10-stick pack on top of the existing 67 percent supplementary duty) and raising the price of all tobacco products — would yield about 44,000 crore taka in additional revenue over the current year while preventing about 400,000 premature deaths in the long term. The budget leaves the prices and tax rates of bidi, jorda and gul — gravely harmful to health — unchanged, making them yet cheaper and more available and raising health risks for women and the poor. The budget proposes a 500-taka retail price and 40 percent supplementary duty on 10 grams of nicotine pouch, and a 210-taka retail price and 67 percent supplementary duty on 10 sticks of heated tobacco; though the health ministry proposed banning these products, the amended tobacco-control law did not consider it, leaving people exposed to added health risk. Other steps include a 350 percent supplementary duty on nicotine-granule and nicotine-pouch imports and a proposal to introduce a “track and trace” system to monitor tobacco production and supply. In Bangladesh, 35.3 percent of adults use tobacco and about 200,000 people die of tobacco-related diseases each year, with tobacco-related health and environmental damage costing 87,000 crore taka a year. PROGGA and ATMA have called on the government to seize the chance to protect public health and raise revenue by including the anti-tobacco reform proposals in the final budget.
বাংলায় মূল প্রতিবেদন পড়ুন · Read the original Bengali report