Austria and Jordan joined the list of Iran’s export destinations for cigarettes for the first time in the year ending March 2020.
The announcement was made by Ataollah Maroufkhani, the head of the Ministry of Industries, Mining and Trade’s affiliate, the Iranian Tobacco Planning and Supervision Center.
“A total of 154 million cigarettes were exported last year. Iran’s cigarette production decreased from 49 billion in the year ending March 2018 to 48 billion in the year ending March 2019. However, for the first time in the 100-year history of the industry in Iran, cigarette output reached 55 billion last year. Local cigarette output is worth 170,000 billion rials [$909 million] annually,” he was quoted as saying by Fars News Agency.
Noting that tobacco exports hovered around 2.37 million kilograms last year, the official said, “Much of our tobacco exports head to Eastern European countries, Russia, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Armenia and Turkey while our cigarettes are mostly purchased by Turkey, Afghanistan and Pakistan.”
The government earned 17,023 billion rials ($91 million) from cigarette consumption tax in the year ending March 2020, Fars News Agency reported.
The figure indicates a 50% rise compared with last year’s 11,334 billion rials ($60.6 million).
Tax on cigarettes sales increased by 22.8% to reach 7,868 billion rials ($42.07 million) last year compared with 6,406 billion rials ($34.25 million) in the fiscal 2018-19.