Delipalla Sophia, El-Awa Fatimah, Hammerich Asmus, Perucic Anne-Marie, El-Gohary Sophia
Department of Balkan, Slavic and Oriental Studies, School of Economics and Regional Studies, University of Macedonia, Thessaloniki, Greece.
Universal Health Coverage/Noncommunicable Diseases and Mental Health, WHO Office for the Eastern Mediterranean, Cairo, Egypt.
East Mediterr Health J. 2024 Dec 3;30(11):738-745. doi: 10.26719/2024.30.11.738.
In 2016, the 6 Gulf Cooperation Council countries agreed to implement a harmonized excise tax on tobacco products, at a rate of 100% of the pre-tax price.
To assess the implementation of tobacco taxation in Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates and its impact on consumer prices, affordability and substitution possibilities.
This study conducted simple descriptive analysis of open-source secondary data reported to WHO by Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates on cigarette excise taxes, price levels, price dispersion, and affordability.
The 3 countries imposed more than 70% excise tax on tobacco products. Saudi Arabia, in addition, imposed the value added tax. This led to sharp price increases and less affordability in all the countries. In 2020, the affordability index in the Gulf Cooperation Council countries ranged from 1.3% in Kuwait to 3.8% in Saudi Arabia. However, affordability was still higher in these countries than in the rest of the world.
Despite the progress made on tobacco tax reform in the 3 countries, affordability was higher than in other countries, indicating the need for improvements. The tobacco tax system has some weaknesses that need to be addressed in future reforms, for example, the lack of systematic data collection and management systems and the disconnect between the health, tax economics, research, and policy experts.
2016年，6个海湾合作委员会国家同意对烟草制品实施统一消费税，税率为税前价格的100%。
评估巴林、沙特阿拉伯和阿拉伯联合酋长国烟草税收的实施情况及其对消费价格、可承受性和替代可能性的影响。
本研究对巴林、沙特阿拉伯和阿拉伯联合酋长国向世界卫生组织报告的关于香烟消费税、价格水平、价格离散度和可承受性的开源二手数据进行了简单描述性分析。
这3个国家对烟草制品征收超过70%的消费税。此外，沙特阿拉伯还征收增值税。这导致所有国家的价格大幅上涨，可承受性降低。2020年，海湾合作委员会国家的可承受性指数从科威特的1.3%到沙特阿拉伯的3.8%不等。然而，这些国家的可承受性仍高于世界其他地区。
尽管这3个国家在烟草税改革方面取得了进展，但可承受性仍高于其他国家，表明有必要加以改进。烟草税收制度存在一些弱点，需要在未来改革中加以解决，例如缺乏系统的数据收集和管理系统，以及卫生、税收经济学、研究和政策专家之间的脱节。
