Cigarette

Every fifth cigarette in Bulgaria is illegal, according to a survey on the illicit cigarette market commissioned by world concerns.

Bulgaria's budget records losses of nearly BGN 0.5B annually only due to the unpaid excise duty on tobacco products, private TV station BTV reports.

By Anestis Dokas

The state missed out on taxes of about 565 million euros last year due to the illegal tobacco trade in Greece, which showed a 4.4 percent rise year-on-year, reaching 17.8 percent of all tobacco trading, according to a survey by KPMG conducted across the European Union for four major tobacco multinationals.

One in 10 smoked cigarettes in the EU in 2013 was illegal, shows a survey of KPMG, quoted by Mediapool.bg.

In it took part the tobacco giants British American Tobacco, Imperial Tobacco, Japan Tobacco and Philip Morris International. 

A 42-year-old Pakistani national faced a prosecutor over the weekend after being found in possession of counterfeit products and contraband cigarettes.

Some 10.6 million packets of cigarettes were found on Wednesday in two of three cargo containers labeled as containing office supplies that arrived at the port of Piraeus from Dubai.

The first of the three containers held 529,000 packets of Ashford King Size cigarettes and the second the same amount of the Tradition brand.

They represent some 3.7 million euros in lost taxes.

Retail prices eased for the 15th month in a row, offering consumers a breather according to Hellenic Statistical Authority data for May, when prices in the country dropped 2 percent on a yearly basis.

The figures released on Tuesday showed that the most significant price reductions concerned potatoes, fresh fruit and vegetables, apparel items, natural gas and vehicle insurance rates.

More than 2.1M Bulgarians, or about 30% of the population, are active smokers, according to a survey of the World Health Organization on occasion of May 31, World No Tobacco Day.

Some 40% of Bulgarian men and 19% of the women are smokers. Men smoke about 40 cigarettes a day, while women - 24 cigarettes, according to the statistiscs of WHO on tobacco smoking in Bulgaria for 2013.

Members of the Financial Crimes Squad (SDOE) confiscated over 1.3 million packs of contraband cigarettes in a warehouse located the area of Kalochori, near the northern port city of Thessaloniki on Tuesday, Greek police said in a statement on Wednesday.

A truck bearing Bulgarian plates and heating devices were also discovered in the warehouse, according to early reports.

As a state crackdown on smoking in public places intensifies, a joint survey by the Education and Health ministries has indicated that smoking among school-age children is a growing problem, with one in 10 secondary school pupils admitting to smoking regularly while the majority claim to have had their first cigarette before the age of 13.

The percentage of cigarettes on sale in Romania that have been smuggled into the country rose slightly to 15.8 per cent in March, up 0.1 percentage point compared to the previous month, market sources said.

Most smuggled cigarettes come from neighboring Moldova and Ukraine, according to a report from Novel Research polling company.