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| Friday, 18 July 2003 |
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by Ravi Ladduwahetty The Government will shortly amend the Tobacco Tax Act which will empower the Police, Customs and authorities to arrest smugglers and destroy smuggled cigarettes. The Amendments to the Act will also ensure that offenders will be arrested and the highlight of the amended laws will be that the contraband seized will not be auctioned but will be burnt or destroyed, Excise Commissioner (Revenue) W. H De Alwis told the Daily News yesterday last night. He said that the product-White Beedi which is being locally manufactured illegally as a cottage industry, will also be declared as contraband under the amended laws. He said that the Government loses approximately Rs. 750 million annually due to smuggled cigarettes and that a new brand of smuggled cigarettes called "Gold Seal" has significantly penetrated the Sri Lankan market and is now freely available in both urban and rural areas. The Excise Department authorities have also intensified raids on outlets dealing in the sale of smuggled cigarettes and have conducted successful raids in the Puttalam, Galle, Anuradhapura, Kurunegala and Ja-ela areas. Customs had imposed a fine of Rs. 450,000 from such a raid at Ratnapura. Gold Seal cigarettes, according to authoritative sources, are being smuggled into the country from Pakistan concealed in containers amongst other perishable items such as potatoes, dry fish, rice, etc. According to these sources, within the last few weeks two containers have been detected at the Colombo Port among a consignment of potatoes and large quantities have been seized in Pettah. Mirihana Police too have seized over 700,000 cigarettes from stockist of smuggled cigarettes in the Pettah, Nugegoda and Mattakkuliya areas. Gold Seal cigarettes are also brought in from Pakistan by organised traffickers alongwith pharmaceuticals and compact discs through the Bandaranaike International Airport On June 25 over 200,000 cigarettes were seized by Customs authorities at the Colombo International Airport. Gold Seal cigarettes which are smuggled into the country are being sold at Rs. 5 per stick as against the price of legal cigarettes of the same length of Rs. 8 to Rs. 8.50. Meanwhile, Sri Lanka's monopoly cigarette manufacturer- Ceylon Tobacco Co. Ltd (CTC) also welcomed the strategic moves of the Government to combat this menace which has assumed epic proportions of late. CTC Deputy Managing Director Jayampathy Bandaranaike confirmed that the import of smuggled cigarettes have increased by 185 percent between the years 2001 and 2003 which deprived the state coffers to around Rs. one billion per annum and said that it was heartening that the Government was taking meaningful steps to arrest the problem. He said that the persons who were marketing these contraband products were adopting surreptitious modes of promotion such as travel bags which appear to be legal to the naive consumer. If this menace is not eradicated right now, it will zoom to uncontrollable levels and nobody will be able to do anything about it, he said. |
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