Excise duties on cigarettes will double

The excise duties on cigarettes will be twice higher from January 1 and will be 20 lei per 1 000 pieces (on filter cigarettes – 20 lei + 24%). The chapter about excises on tobacco products of the 2012 budgetary-fiscal policy was adopted in the variant proposed by the Government, even if the opposition demanded increasing excises up to 50 lei, Info-Prim Neo reports. The head of the Liberal-Democratic parliamentary group Valeriu Strelet said the Government’s policy is to gradually increase the excise duties. Only this way will they manage to make all the economic entities operating on the tobacco market to work legally and will exclude the pressure exerted on the national producers. “We consider that those who suggest suddenly increasing the excise duties on tobacco aim to eliminate the national producer Tutun-CTC from the competition, but this will affect about 2,000 employees,” said the Liberal-Democrat. According to Strelet, if the excises on the filter cigarettes produced by Tutun-CTC are increased suddenly, they will become uncompetitive in a relatively short period of time as the local producers are obliged to increase the excise duties on their products at the same pace. “Any rise affects the people when they do not have money. But there is no other solution than to think about the fact that the people should smoke less,” said the head of the Liberal Party Mihai Ghimpu. The Communist lawmakers proposed raising the excises to 50 lei. According to Oleg Reidman, this would help collect an extra over 150 million lei in the budget. As the proposal wasn’t accepted, the Communist MPs left the assembly hall.