South Africa has seen a rise in individuals who smoke. Lefty Shivambu/Gallo Images through Getty Images
Tobacco use imposes a big well being and financial burden on nations. Research estimates that the price of smoking in South Africa amounted to 0.97% of the nation’s GDP in 2016. These prices are more likely to have elevated because of the noticed rise in smoking prevalence over the previous 5 years.
In 2021, South Africa performed its first Global Adult Tobacco Survey. This is a nationally consultant family survey that displays tobacco use amongst adults aged 15 years and older. According to the outcomes, 25.8% of the South African inhabitants (11.1 million adults) at present smoke tobacco. This is considerably larger than the 19.9% estimated in the latest wave of the National Income Dynamics Study that was performed in 2017. Tobacco use is related to a myriad of sicknesses together with cancers.
Research has proven that one approach to scale back tobacco use is constant, year-on-year will increase in tobacco excise taxes. The excise tax will increase must be sustained over time and adjusted yearly, on the very least. These tax will increase ought to be nicely above the inflation fee to have a significant influence on the affordability of tobacco merchandise. Reductions within the affordability of tobacco merchandise will guarantee important reductions in tobacco use.
A serious problem to this technique is the proliferation of the illicit tobacco commerce within the nation. Independent analysis means that illicit cigarette gross sales constituted a staggering 54% of the full market in 2021. Illicit cigarettes are comparatively low cost as a result of they bypass taxes. This makes cigarettes extra reasonably priced, which will increase smoking charges.
The tobacco business has labored tirelessly in South Africa, and throughout the globe, to persuade coverage makers that will increase within the tobacco taxes trigger will increase in illicit commerce. This argument is self-serving and has no credible analysis backing.
In truth, South Africa’s personal tobacco taxation report reveals that excise taxes could be elevated aggressively, with out exacerbating the illicit market. When it involves tobacco use, the nation has twin however unrelated issues. The first is the federal government’s insufficient excise tax will increase on tobacco. The second is the thriving illicit tobacco market. To tackle these, the federal government should improve tobacco taxes quicker to cut back their affordability, and enhance enforcement to cut back the presence of illicit tobacco merchandise available in the market.
Excise taxes
Between 1994 and 2009, inflation-adjusted cigarette excise taxes in South Africa elevated five-fold. This resulted in a near-tripling of actual cigarette retail costs.
These worth will increase and different elements, together with the introduction of tobacco management laws, noticed a lower in South Africa’s smoking prevalence from roughly a 3rd of the inhabitants to lower than a fifth between 1994 and 2012.
Peer-reviewed analysis analyzing developments in illicit commerce in South Africa between 2002 and 2017 finds no proof that the illicit market grew when cigarette excise taxes had been rising quickly within the Nineties and early 2000s. Instead, the analysis reveals that the illicit cigarette commerce solely turned a big downside in South Africa from 2009 onwards. The illicit market grew from lower than 5% in 2009 to round 17% in 2014 – after which elevated to greater than 30% in 2017.
During this era, the true (inflation-adjusted) excise tax on cigarettes remained largely unchanged. This truth dispels the tobacco business’s arguments in regards to the hyperlink between tobacco taxes and illicit commerce in South Africa.
The speedy progress in illicit commerce between 2009 and 2017 could be attributed to the erosion of the income providers’ investigative capability. Between 2014 and 2018 it disbanded specialised items that had been established to analyze the tobacco business.
Under new management, in early 2019, the income service arrange an Illicit Economy Unit. In the 2019/2020 fiscal 12 months cigarette tax income and the variety of cigarettes on which excise tax was levied elevated.
Unfortunately, the 20-week ban on tobacco gross sales, imposed by the federal government in 2020, undid this progress. Research means that the ban entrenched the illicit market by making a scenario the place producers and merchants operated in an completely illicit marketplace for an prolonged time period. During the gross sales ban, most cigarettes had been offered by means of casual shops.
Because it results in decrease tobacco costs, illicit commerce straight will increase tobacco consumption. It additionally undermines non-tax insurance policies to cut back tobacco use. Cabinet has lately permitted the Tobacco Products and Electronic Delivery Systems Control Bill of 2018. Among different issues, the invoice seeks to introduce plain packaging and graphic well being warnings for all tobacco and nicotine merchandise. These insurance policies have been confirmed efficient in lowering smoking initiation and inspiring quitting.
But their effectiveness shall be considerably undermined if low cost, illicit cigarettes are broadly accessible.
Illicit commerce
Illicit commerce considerations criminals and cash. It can solely be addressed by means of efficient enforcement mechanisms which embody, amongst different issues, measures to safe the tobacco provide chain. The South African authorities has not ratified the Protocol to Eliminate Illicit Trade in Tobacco Products, regardless of a number of requests by civil society organisations to take action.
Should South Africa ratify the Protocol, the nation will commit itself to implement measures which have been confirmed to cut back the illicit commerce in cigarettes. Measures embody the adoption of observe and hint expertise that’s unbiased of the tobacco business, and licensing of brokers within the tobacco provide chain, amongst different issues.
Illicit commerce additionally considerably reduces authorities income. The tobacco gross sales ban offered an excessive instance of how dramatic these income losses could be. During the 20-week gross sales ban, authorities misplaced roughly R6 billion in excise duties on cigarette gross sales alone. Most, if not all, tobacco firms continued to provide and promote cigarettes in the course of the gross sales ban. No excise taxes had been paid on these gross sales.
Recent media experiences have documented the income providers’ investigation into Gold Leaf Tobacco Corporation. This motion is an efficient first step in addressing tax evasion by cigarette producers as it’s more likely to incentivise tax compliance amongst different tobacco firms.
However, given the size of South Africa’s illicit commerce downside, extra must be performed. It is of the utmost significance that authorities ratifies the Protocol to Eliminate Illicit Trade in Tobacco Products and implements its provisions. At the identical time, it’s crucial that the Treasury considerably will increase the tobacco excise tax annually to discourage tobacco use in South Africa.
Immediate steps
The Treasury ought to implement a method during which they improve the tobacco excise tax by a pre-announced proportion (for instance 10% above the inflation fee) on a multi-year foundation.
It has been demonstrated in nations corresponding to Australia and the Philippines that such a multi-year tobacco taxation technique reduces the affordability of tobacco merchandise over time. This has improved public well being outcomes, and raised authorities revenues.
It would additionally align South Africa’s tobacco taxation technique with the suggestions of the World Health Organization Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, a world treaty that requires ratifying nations to implement insurance policies to cut back the demand and provide of tobacco merchandise. South Africa ratified the treaty in 2005. But is but to implement the treaty’s suggestions on best-practice tobacco taxation coverage. Until it does, authorities will proceed to overlook out on the chance to lift much-needed further income, and save lives.
Sam Filby is a Research Officer on the Research Unit on the Economics of Excisable Products, based mostly on the University of Cape Town. REEP receives funding from the African Capacity Building Foundation (in flip funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation), Cancer Research UK, the CDC Foundation and the DG Murray Trust. Sam can be a co-founder of byegwaai, South Africa's first app-based smoking cessation programme.
Corne van Walbeek is the Director of the Research Unit on the Economics of Excisable Products (REEP). REEP receives funding from the African Capacity Building Foundation (in flip funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation), Cancer Research UK, the CDC Foundation and the DG Murray Trust.
