WHO tax plan given short shrift in Russia

Russia’s chief health inspector has told the World Health Organization it has no right to dictate how Russia should develop its tobacco pricing policies, according to a TV Novosti report.

The head of WHO’s office in Russia, Luigi Migliorini, had earlier expressed disappointment in plans for ‘lower than expected’ tobacco excise increases after 2016.

Migliorini wrote a letter to Health Minister, Veronika Skvortsova, suggesting that tobacco excise tax in Russia should grow sevenfold by 2020 to €90 per 1,000 cigarettes, bringing the average retail price of a cigarette pack to RB238 from the current RB46.

“I strongly disagree with this suggestion,” said Gennady Onishchenko in an interview with Echo Moskvy radio. The sevenfold increase is unacceptable and when the WHO tells us to do so it is a wrong approach.

“We are not the country to be told what to do…”

Russia’s Health Ministry said it would consider the WHO recommendations as well as suggestions by other experts in this area, while working out its own approaches toward tobacco excise policies.