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The black market of cigarettes in Romania decreased last year for the first time in six years, below 14 pct, which meant higher budgetary revenues from the taxation of cigarettes, but the damage to the state budget amounts to about 3 billion lei (over 650 million euros), each year, according to a press release from British American Tobacco (BAT), sent on Tuesday to AGERPRES.
"Last year, the authorities made sustained efforts against smugglers and so Romania managed to bring the black market below 14 pct, for the first time in many years. However, the state continues to lose about 3 billion lei annually from illicit cigarette trafficking alone. If this money were collected in the form of taxes and taxes on the budget, it could be of real help in key areas such as securing borders or building cars. It could also be a real help for the areas most affected by smuggling, where the money could be transferred to local development so that citizens are no longer tempted to engage in such actions," Ileana Dumitru, Legal And Public Relations Director at British American Tobacco, says.
According to the public data available on the stopcontrabanda.ro website, the first centralised data log offering in real time the situation of cigarette seizures in Romania developed at the BAT initiative in 2019, the authorities' efforts in the fight against illicit cigarette trafficking have resulted in total seizures amounting to more than 78 million lei.
Information related to cigarette smuggling in Romania shows that our country has the highest level of cigarette smuggling in Eastern Europe, with 2,000 km of border with non-EU countries, where the price of tobacco can be up to six times lower, and each container of illegal cigarettes means one million euros profit for smuggling networks.
