Tobacco production in BiH is in the phase of complete extinguishing, all domestic processing capacities have been previously destroyed, and the strange rules of complicated procedures that domestic farmers must comply with this type of production.
In the last year, tobacco was produced an additional decrease of as much as 59.3 percent compared to 2023. year. In the same year, the citizens of BiH were exhausted by more than 200 million KM cigarettes from imports.
A series of factors
– Domestic tobacco production in the list is practically exhaled. In Herzegovina, the last tobacco station was closed in 2012. in Stolac, and producers in Orašje, Gradačac, Bijeljina struggle to keep production. The string is factors that led to this. First of all, the processing capacities have been closed, the Bottom Factory in Sarajevo was closed, although its brands bought “British American Tobacco”, but the production is not going to BiH – says the director of the Federal AgroMediterranean Institute from Mostar Marko Ivanković.
Recall, for 140 years of work, the Tobacco Factory Sarajevo survived three countries, and the period of aggression on BiH, when it also worked under the grenades, but not the Government of FBiH with the Fadilo Novalić, which sold its share in FDS. The factory has officially stopped working at the end of March 2022, when its 150 workers were released, and its cult brand “DRINA” from the BiH market arrives from Poland.
Organizer of production
– We brought the law, which should already be changed, because then we did not know an electronic cigarette. The law determined that the monopoly over tobacco production has a state. There is no free market, everything has been determined, but in practice he did not come to life, because there are no appropriate ordinances. When it comes to production, you need to do this legal, you must have a contract with the production organizer beforehand. Manufacturers have signed contracts with tobacco stations, which were state-owned. As soon as you do not have public companies, production is in the gray zone. So, there is no production that should be legal, you have no redemption, and the state is obviously no interest, nor the private sector has found its interest. If you were, who you will sell it when in BiH you no longer have any factory that works cigarettes – Ivanković points out.
The largest tobacco harvest
It recalls that in the proportional excise price in the amount of 3.42 percent of the retail price, a specific excise price, from 1. January, is 1.65 KM per cigarette and duties of 143.2 km per kilogram of the state generates huge income. Ivanković is one of the authors of the analysis made for 2018, 2019. and 2020. year, in which the budget, through excises and taxes, ascending as much as 90 percent from the retail price of tobacco products.
The average in the region was 78 percent. He says it affects the development of the Black Market. The largest berbel tobacco in Herzegovina was recorded in 1976. years, and the leans on the box of cigarettes then amounted to 69 percent, writes Avaz.
