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“We anticipate the working group will begin their work in 2011 and the industry across the world will be responding accordingly.“ |
Keith Spinks Secretary General ETRC |
INTERNATIONAL. A World Health Organization (WHO) Working Group has been established to examine the use of price and taxation policies as a means of reducing the demand for tobacco. The Group’s creation could lead to further WHO attacks on duty free sales, said the European Travel Retail Council (ETRC). WHO has linked the availability of duty free tobacco products with illicit trade, tax avoidance and tax evasion.
The Working Group will seek to integrate finance ministries into the area of tobacco control, which is typically handled by health ministries.
The announcement was made in Uruguay at the conclusion of an international conference of states who are parties to the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC). The focus of the Working Group will be one of the areas raised by WHO’s Tobacco Free Initiative in its Technical Report on Price and Taxation Policies of the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control.
The Working Group, which will comprise representatives from five states from each of WHO’s six regions, faces an immediate challenge as there is currently no budget available for their work in 2011. In addition they face substantial opposition from many countries (including those in the EU) which maintain that taxation is, and should remain, a matter for national governments.
ETRC has expressed concern that a claim in the WHO report, which suggests that duty free sales of tobacco undermine national taxation polices, will be used to indirectly attack the duty free industry.
“These are claims made without any basis,” said ETRC Secretary General Keith Spinks. “Duty free sales account for less than 1% of the global tobacco market. It is disingenuous in the extreme to suggest that with such limited market presence, duty free undermines national taxation policies. We anticipate the Working Group will begin their work in 2011 and the industry across the world will be responding accordingly.”
In a separate development, WHO agreed to hold the next round of negotiations on the Illicit Trade Protocol in early 2012. ETRC and other stakeholder organisations have consistently defended the industry against unfounded claims by certain NGOs that duty free is a major source of illicit trade.
