Bangladesh: Raising Tobacco Taxes in FY 2023-24

This Fact Sheet was developed by tobacco control partners from Institute of Health Economics, Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, The Union, Vital Strategies, the World Health Organization, and Tobacconomics. The fact sheet discusses the current tobacco tax structure in Bangladesh and assesses the impact of introducing a tiered specific excise tax with uniform burden of 65% and increasing the minimum price across all brands in FY 2023-2024 would reduce the harms caused by tobacco use and raise additional revenue. Specifically, this would reduce the prevalence of smoking from 15.1% to 13.92% as nearly 1.4 million adults would quit and nearly 1 million youth would not initiate use. In the long-term, raising cigarette taxes would save 488,000 current adults and nearly 492,000 current youth from premature death. This scenario would also generate nearly BDT 42.3 thousand crore in tax revenue, which is 30% higher than current tobacco tax collection. Increasing cigarette prices on low-tier brands relatively more will especially encourage lower-income smokers to quit and discourage all smokers from switching down (substitution) to cheaper brands. The fact sheet presents a set of recommendations for policy makers in Bangladesh to reap the benefits of effective cigarette tax policies.