Thanks to the COVID-19 tobacco sales ban in 2020, South Africa has one of the highest illicit tobacco levels in the world today, with an Ipsos study finding that almost 60% of stores across the country are selling products for less than the minimum collectable tax (MCT).

Chile’s fiscal traceability system on tobacco products (SITRAF) has been instrumental in allowing the Chilean tax authority, Servicio de Impuestos Internos (SII) to identify a company that has been illegally manufacturing cigarettes in the country.

KPMG has released its latest annual study on illicit cigarettes in Europe1, commissioned by Philip Morris Products SA. The study shows that while illicit consumption in the 27 EU member states declined by 0.6 billion sticks in 2023, to reach 35.2 billion, overall illicit consumption in the 38 markets covered by the study rose by 3%, reaching 52.2 billion sticks.

The Philippines’ House Ways and Means Committee has approved legislation that will expand the country’s tobacco tax stamp system into a more comprehensive approach for tracking the entire supply chain of tobacco products, including their origin, route, and final point of sale.

Researchers in China have developed a method for identifying counterfeit cigarettes, based on the stable isotope profiles of the tobacco contained within them.

According to the Sarajevo Times, the implementation of increased controls by Bosnia and Herzegovina’s tax authority and law enforcement agencies have drastically reduced the tobacco black market in the country, to the point where tobacco excise revenues are expected to exceed BAM 1 billion ($548 million) for the first time in history.

In the May 2024 issue of Tax Stamp & Traceability News™, we described how a white paper published by an informal EU parliamentary working group on tobacco products had highlighted the permeability of some European Commission departments to tobacco industry lobbying. The paper raised concerns that such permeability was causing delays in the revision of two important tobacco regulations: one on taxation and one on traceability.

Depending on who you ask, Panama – which recently played host to the COP9 meeting of parties to the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) – is either a best-in- class example of a country using tobacco controls to excellent effect, or the world’s biggest hub for illicit cigarette trade.

During his 2024 national budget speech, in February, Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana said the South African Revenue Service (SARS) was deploying closed-circuit television (CCTV) and related technologies on the premises of licensed tobacco manufacturers, to address the high levels of illicit tobacco.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) South-East Asia Region has released a new research report on the illicit trade of tobacco in the region, with the conclusion that illicit levels are ‘generally not alarmingly high in most South-East Asian (SEA) countries’.