MANILA: Civil society groups in the Philippines called for significant increase in tobacco tax every year starting 2018 to discourage the Filipino youth from smoking.
The HealthJustice Philippines, National Anti-Poverty Commission’s Youth and Student Sectoral Council, Philippine Cancer Society, Center for Empowerment and Development of the Elderly and Seniors (CEDES), National Anti-Poverty Commission’s Senior Citizen’s Sectoral Council, EcoWaste Coalition, ANG NARS, New Vois Association of the Philippines, and ONE for Nursing Empowerment seek a P1 per cigarette stick or P20 per pack increase in tobacco taxes.
“The tobacco tax is primarily a health measure. Increasing the tobacco tax is recognized by the World Health Organization (WHO) as one of the most effective ways of preventing the youth from starting to smoke,” the groups said in a statement.
They said the country’s tobacco tax, which remains one of the lowest in the world, should be raised significantly to have the most substantial impact on the health of the country’s youth. The sin tax reform law passed in 2012 introduced higher excise rates for tobacco products and paved the way for a unitary rate system by 2017. It indexed the tax rate to inflation by increasing it annually by 4 percent, regardless of the price and brand of cigarettes.
House of Representatives Bill 4144, which sought to amend the sin tax reform law by replacing the unitary system with a two-tier tobacco tax system, was however filed on Oct. 19 last year. Under the proposed change, two different tax rates will be imposed, depending on the cigarettes’ classification, with premium brands to be taxed higher than budget brands.
Civil society groups opposing the bill pointed out that it will only dilute the public health objective of the tobacco tax by encouraging smokers to shift to cheaper brands of cigarettes rather than quit smoking altogether or reduce tobacco consumption.
