Prices of cigarette, bidi to go up further

To curtail the consumption of tobacco products and maximise revenue, finance minister AHM Mustafa Kamal on Thursday placed a few proposals to increase prices of cigarette, bidi and other tobacco goods in the country.

In his budget speech of fiscal 2020-21, the finance minister said, “Price per 10 sticks of lower slab cigarettes to be Tk 39 and above and supplementary duty on it to be 57 percent; I propose to fix the price per 10 sticks of middle slab cigarettes at Tk 63 and above, that of 10 sticks of high slab cigarettes at Tk. 97 and above and the price of 10 sticks of premium slab cigarettes at Tk. 128 and above where supplementary duty will be 65 percent for all those three slabs.”

He also said, “I propose to raise the price of handmade non-filter 25 sticks of bidi at Tk 18 from the existing Tk 14, that of 12 sticks at Tk 9 from existing Tk 6.72 and the price of 8 sticks at Tk 6 from existing Tk 4.48 where supplementary duty of this product will be unchanged at 30 percent.”

He added, “I also propose to fix the price of 20 sticks of filter bidi at Tk. 19 from existing Tk 17 and that of 10 sticks of filter bidi at Tk 10 from existing Tk 8.50 where supplementary duty will remain unchanged at 40 per cent.”

Jarda and gul

The finance minister also said, “I propose to fix the price of 10 gm of jarda (chewing tobacco) at Tk 40 and the price of 10 gm of gul (another form of tobacco) at Tk 20. Supplementary duty of both the products is proposed to become 55 per cent.”