Economic cost of smoking stands at Rs 143.208 billion p.a.: report

The economic cost of smoking in Pakistan amounts to Rs 143.208 billion annually and it includes direct costs related to healthcare expenditures and indirect costs related to lost productivity due to early mortality and morbidity. This was revealed in a report that was presented in the "17th World Conference on Tobacco or Health Uniting the World for a Tobacco Free Generation."
The report also revealed that every year more than 160,100 people died in Pakistan of tobacco-caused diseases and still more than 125,000 children (10-14 years old) and 14,737,000 adults (15+ years old) continue to use tobacco each day. It said that the complacency in the face of the tobacco epidemic insulates the tobacco industry in Pakistan and ensures that tobacco's death toll will grow every year, adding that tobacco control advocates must reach out to other communities and resources to strengthen their efforts and create change.
It also raised concerns over taxes imposed on the tobacco industry. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), minimum 70 percent of retail price is excise tax but in Pakistan 45.79 percent of retail price is excise tax. "A smoker in Pakistan would have to spend 8 percent of their average income (measured by per capita GDP) to purchase 10 of the most popular cigarettes to smoke daily each year," it said.
Pakistan produced 129,878 metric tons of tobacco in 2014, though still the tobacco growing is only a small fraction of agriculture in the country with only 0.14 percent of agricultural land devoted to tobacco cultivation, it added. The report said that there 69.43 billion cigarettes were produced in Pakistan in 2016 and cigarette imports exceeded cigarette exports in Pakistan in 2016, which hurt the country's trade balance.
Chief Executive Officer of The Network for Consumers Protection, Nadeem Iqbal said that Pakistan has been doing quite well in levying taxes on the tobacco by charging over 60 percent of the retail price, but the government reduced it drastically by introducing a third tier of taxation on the tobacco in 2017-18 budget. "This not only resulted in increase of use of tobacco, but also in reduction of tax collection from the industry," he said, urging the government to withdraw the third tier of taxes on the tobacco in the upcoming budget to increase the tax collection and decrease the tobacco use, especially in the children.
Before the announcement of the 2017-18 budget, the Ministry of National Health Services suggested the government to increase tax on the cigarettes to Rs 44 for a pack of 20 cigarettes. Contrary to the suggestion, the government introduced the third tier of taxation for the tobacco industry in the budget due to which the tax reduced to as low as Rs 16 for a pack of 20 cigarettes.