Tobacco farmers lobby seeks Centre's intervention to stop cigarette smuggling

An Indian tobacco farmers lobby has acussed the overseas tobacco companies behind cigarette smuggling in the country and has sought Centre's intervention to come up with policy to stop such illegal sales.

The Federation of All India Farmer Associations (FAIFA) has submitted its appeal to various ministries such as the prime minister's office, health and family welfare, agriculture, commerce and industry, and labour.

In a press release issued on Tuesday, FAIFA said an erroneous research paper was recently published by an organisation backed by multinational tobacco companies which had downplayed the volume of smuggled cigarettes in the country.


Murali Babu, general secretary at FAIFA, said this clearly demonstrates some of the multinational companies’ are using all possible means to mislead policy makers and pushing for a policy that makes their business more profitable, be it through excessive regulations, high tax arbitrage or downplaying the problem of smuggled cigarettes.

"This is being done to divert the attention of the government agencies, who are tracking and seizing smuggled cigarettes," he said.

The organisation said tobacco farmers in India are under extreme duress due to heavy taxation and adverse regulatory environment on the legal cigarette industry. The excessive taxation on cigarettes has given a huge boost to smuggled cigarettes in India which currently stands at 25 billion sticks, it said.

Smuggled cigarettes do not use Indian tobacco and because of this Indian farmers have lost volume of 16 million kg per annum due to loss of volume of legal cigarette industry. This has resulted in drop in earnings of FCV tobacco farmers which has shrunk cumulatively by more than Rs 3,650 crore in the last three years, FAIFA said.