Retail selling prices for cigarettes to increase in Moldova

Chisinau, 2 November /MOLDPRES/ - The minimum retail selling price for cigarettes will increase, according to an amendment to the article 9 of the state budget law for 2017, adopted by the parliament in the final reading today.
According to an informative note attached to the draft, the goal of the amendments is to increase the revenues to the state budget, enhance the protection of the residents’ health condition and protect the domestic market.  
Thus, the level of the minimum retail selling price for one packet of oval unfiltered cigarettes will be 10 lei, against 7 lei at present and the minimum price for one packet of unfiltered cigarettes with holder will be of 12 lei, against 7 lei at present. At the same time, the minimum selling price of a packet of filter cigarettes will be of 16 lei.      
By increasing the minimum retail selling price for the unfiltered cigarettes, decision-makers enhance the role of the minimum price as an instrument which will considerably reduce from the placement on the market and sale of cigarettes at low prices. This, for its turn, will diminish the access of minors and young persons  to cheap tobacco products, and in particular, will diminish the access to unfiltered cigarettes, which represent a higher degree of noxiousness than the filter cigarettes, which will automatically reduce the volume of cigarettes this category of residents consume. At the same time, the other categories of the population will also be prompted to cut the volume of cigarettes bought.   
The reduction of the tobacco consumption through the change of the minimum retail selling price for cigarettes will contribute also to a cut in the annual spending for health, related to the diseases triggered by the tobacco consumption, which is estimated at over 880 million lei. At the same time, the estimations of the economic costs of the productivity lost caused by tobacco because of the premature death, hospitalizations and outpatient treatment of the serious diseases triggered by smoking reached about 1.830 billion lei.     
(Reporter A. Ciobanu, editor A. Raileanu)