• Українська
  • Русский
  • English
Where there is no law, but every man does what is right in his own eyes, there is the least of real liberty
Henry M. Robert

Although the Ministry of Health Warns

24 February, 1998 - 00:00


Tobacco products are the goose that laid the golden egg for the Ukrainian economy


In 1997 tobacco plants produced 21.4% more cigarettes and cigars than in 1996. Production of filtered cigarettes doubled, and the range of foreign brands broadened substantially. All this fosters defending the market from imports and above all from illegal imports, which have dropped 2.4 times.

The state has collected Hr 131.1 million in value added tax and 128.8 million in excise taxes on tobacco products, more than twice as much as in 1996. Excise and VAT taxes on imported tobacco products added about 110 million to the treasury.

Success in the smoke sector in connected with tax and legislative stability concerning the tobacco industry. This state of affairs has fostered foreign investment which has already topped $130 million. The biggest foreign tobacco companies have already begun to take over the Ukrainian market by buying local plants: Reemstma in Kyiv and Cherkasy, R. J. Reynolds in Lviv and Kremenchuk, BAT in Pryluky, and Philip Morris in Kharkiv. Other companies account for only 7.5% of Ukrainian production.

Extremely symptomatic is the growth of the Kharkiv Tobacco plant. In 1994 before it was purchased by Philip Morris produce one billion cigarettes annually, while last December alone it produced two billion and pays 58 million hryvnias in local taxes annually.

Both photos illustrate the trade in contraband cigarettes but half a century apart, then in sunny Milan after World War II. What war brought the women trading in Kyiv’s frosty streets to such a state?

 

Issue: 
Rubric: