In the midst of a surging wave of amendments undertaken by president Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi, sales taxes on cigarettes are facing their third increase in a year according to a national decree published in the country’s official gazette on Saturday.
The 50 percent tax increase is one of many endeavours by the Egyptian government to boost the state revenue paralleled with a cut back in public spending in order to curb the budget shortfall which reached 12.8 percent of GDP in the fiscal year ended in June 2014.
Cigarettes are highly prevalent in Egypt, with 19 billion cigarettes smoked annually in the country. The country has been ranked as one of the top ten most consumers of tobacco per capita, according to the World Lung Foundation.
The WHO meanwhile reports that at least 30 percent of Egypt’s population, or 27 million Egyptians, smoke cigarettes.
Below is price chart of the different local and imported cigarette brands:
- Marlboro, Dunhill, Merit, and Davidoff: from EGP 19.75 to EGP 25.5
- L&M: from EGP 14.25 to EGP 19.25
- Next: from EGP 13.75 to EGP 18.25
- Kent: from EGP 19.75 to EGP 25.25
- Rothmans: from EGP 14 to EGP 18.75
- Viceroy: from EGP 11 to EGP 15.75
- Cleopatra Soft Packs: from EGP 8 to EGP 12
- Cleopatra Box: from EGP 8.5 to EGP 12.5
According to the tax increase which was issued in July 2014, alcohol saw a hefty 200 percent tax increase, which was not addressed in the latest decree.
Comments (21)
Does Egypt know that most of the Western World frowns upon smoking now?
If a person lights up, he is instantly classified as uneducated or “Third World”.
The consequences of smoking are too many to be ignored.
High time Egypt keeps up with the rest of the world!
The dangers of cigarettes and Shisha are real.
Lool this is funny. I work in the city (london: liverpool street) a high number of smokers so i foubt the third world argument. Well tried mate.
Haha……Karim, even in First World countries one will find pockets of Third World. I live in a First World country. I know only too well 🙂
Third world is a little over simplistic a label. However, there is a clear correlation between smoking on the one hand and intelligence , education on the other. Look at countries like the USA, the UK or France and you’ll see that smoking is a distinct lower class or “white trash” kind of thing. Where I live today, Egypt, I meet loads of people who actually want to argue that links between smoking an cancer are not proven and a kind of Western conspiracy
Uhm people smoke anywhere bud. How does your remark even belong here…? This is obviously an endeavor to decrease smoking as a whole.
I agree people smoke all over the world.
My point is there is now a social stigma attached to smoking in many Western countries.
It’s not a personal attack on Egypt per se.
Stop people from smoking and increase revenue.
Two birds with one stone.
if you stop them from smoking you reduce the revenue made on sales……..
Yes, by all means increase revenue on a product that maims our people. This is great news
Hear hear!!! increase it by 200% and also make public places smoke free too
There will always be people willing to pay.
If you increase the levels of taxation on an inelastic good, such as cigarettes, this will cause a rise in prices but a small fall in the quantity demanded, as cigarettes is a habit-forming good whose demand is not sensitive to changes in price. Hence, increases taxes leads to higher government revenues while avoiding causing unemployment in the cigarette industry because the sales will fall only slightly as, as mentioned before, demand for cigarettes is inelastic.