Activists face hard fight as smokers puff away

Activists face hard fight as smokers puff away

Nopporn Wong-Anan, Reuters, Jakarta

An Indonesian mother covers her baby's face in a pram while a well-dressed young woman next to her takes her last puff on a cigarette at Jakarta's posh Plaza Indonesia.

The air in the restaurants there is dense with tobacco smoke. There is no section set aside for non-smokers.

The scene is typical in a country where smoking is rampant in most public places from offices to canteens and even hospitals and where tobacco advertising on billboards and television is widespread, unlike some of Indonesia's neighbors.

For Indonesia's anti-smoking advocates it means an uphill battle, not only because of the popularity of smoking, but because the tobacco industry is a major employer and provides the debt-ridden government with the bulk of its excise-tax earnings.

"There is no strong political will to address the problem, except from the health ministry," said Laksmiati Hanafiah, vice chairwoman for the National Committee on Smoking Control.

"The government just raised the tax to increase the revenues, not to protect the people's health," she said.

The number of smokers in Indonesia has risen steadily in the past three decades thanks to lax regulations that are loosely enforced, according to a World Health Organization statement quoted by Indonesia's Health Ministry.

One in two students aged from 15 upwards smokes and 59 percent of all males aged from 10 upwards are daily smokers -- one of the highest figures in the region, said the National Committee on Smoking Control, an umbrella group of anti-smoking advocates.

According to ministry data the number of smokers in Indonesia rose by 60 percent during 1970-1990 and by 44.1 percent during 1990-1997 making it the biggest tobacco consumer after China, the United States, Japan and Russia.

Indonesia's 210 million people consume around 220-230 billion sticks a year with annual consumption growing around five percent, according to Merril Lynch.

Around 85 percent of the sticks smoked are clove-laced cigarettes known locally as kretek. The other 15 percent is standard "white cigarettes" with no clove content.

Just three local and two foreign producers -- namely Gudang Garam [GGRM.JK], Sampoerna [HMSP.JK], Philip Morris [MO.N], and British American Tobacco [BATS.L] -- control around 80 percent of the market. The Indonesian companies are among the bluest of blue chips on the Jakarta stock exchange.

Some analysts say to discourage people from smoking is not in the government's interest because it would harm a long-running golden goose that is one of its few reliable revenue sources.

"Primarily, Indonesia is a smoking country, the intensity of the anti-smoking campaign is not as high as in developed countries," Merrill Lynch consumer analyst Heriyanto Iranwan said.

The government would have a delicate if not impossible balancing act trying to satisfy anti-smoking advocates without hurting the economy and reducing much-needed inflows of its revenue, analysts say.

Annual sales volume of the tobacco industry is between Rp 50- 55 trillion (US$5.64-$6.21 billion), accounting for around three percent of gross domestic product, Heriyanto estimated.

And it employs around 400,000 people from tobacco farmers to factory workers and cigarette vendors, in a country where overall economic growth is slower than increases in the work force.

Moreover, around 95 percent of some Rp 22.35 trillion in government excise tax revenue expected this year will come from cigarettes, according to the ministry of finance. Excise taxes account for seven percent of the government's overall revenues.

The government introduced health-related regulations only in 1999, requiring the industry to impose limited restrictions on advertising and reduce the amount of dangerous components.

That was years after some neighbors like Thailand had completely banned cigarette advertising and others like Singapore had prohibited smoking in virtually all public places.

Critics say the government does not discourage smoking because many politicians are from constituencies where voters are involved in growing tobacco or producing cigarettes.

In addition, the cost of treatment for people suffering from tobacco-related disease is bigger than the revenues the government receives, anti-smoking advocates say.

Farid Anfasa Moeloek, a former health minister, said in April annual public and private expenditure on smoking-related treatment was Rp 30 trillion but the government made Rp 10 trillion from tobacco excise.

"You lose Rp 20 trillion a year due to health disorder caused by smoking, which could be invested to improve our children's nutrition," he said. "Health is investment."