Tobacco industry says new law will affect 3 million livelihoods

Business Desk :
According to industry insiders, the proposal to amend the tobacco control act that makes obtaining a license mandatory for all types of tobacco businesses including small shops can potentially have adverse impacts on the small traders’ livelihood as well as government revenue.
“The government risks losing huge tax revenue while jeopardizing millions of small traders’ livelihoods, at a time when the local economy is under tremendous pressure from global economic headwinds and the energy crisis arising from the Russia-Ukraine war,” they said.
As per the draft, its implementation will also put a ban on selling tobacco items from moveable and makeshift shops, declaring hawking tobacco illegal and pronouncing the sale of single-stick cigarettes unlawful.
Experts say specific licensing requirements for retailers to sell tobacco and tobacco products, a ban on the sale of tobacco and tobacco products via moveable shops/hawkers, a ban on displaying tobacco products at points of sale, a ban on the sale of single sticks of cigarettes, the inclusion of tea shops in the definition of a public place – all these proposed provisions will directly impact the livelihoods of low-income people.
Small traders and cigarette hawkers said the move is frustrating with many of them vowing to not comply with any such law.
“I am a hawker, not a loan defaulter. I have been doing business for the last 18 years and if anyone asks me to leave the business, he or she has to take the responsibility of my family members,” Raihan Ali, a hawker in the Mirpur area, told.
Another individual, a wholesale grocery shop owner in Banani said: “Shop owners and small traders are now hard-pressed as their sales are nearly 30% down in recent months. Poverty and unemployment also have consequences on health, not only cigarettes.”
According to the President of the Bangladesh Shop Owners Association Md Helal Uddin, licenses should be required only for manufacturers. He further said that they would take to the streets if the livelihoods of more than three million shop owners and small traders are upended in the name of licensing and banning cigarette sales.
“Why should small traders need licenses from the local government for selling cigarettes?” the association’s leader said.
“I have already held talks with the officials of the Local Government Ministry to scrap licensing requirements for traders under the proposed act,” Helal informed.
Business leaders, as well as economists, both agree that the Ministry of Health and Family Planning’s move for making licensing mandatory citing health issues will also deprive the government of thousands of crores of tax earnings at a time when it is needed the most. The National Board of Revenue (NBR), in the last 2021-2022 fiscal year, earned nearly Tk30,000 crore from cigarettes in value-added tax (VAT), or approximately 10% of the total revenue income of the country.