WHO urges ASEAN tobacco clampdown

The World Health Organization (WHO) has urged members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) to strengthen curbs on the tobacco trade to prevent the industry making a profit from a regional free-trade agreement.

The organization's Western Pacific director, Shigeru Omi, told a conference on Monday that leaders of ASEAN members had to prevent the spread of death and disease, and plug tariff cuts that would benefit tobacco under the Asean Free Trade Agreement.

"Trade liberalization will most likely increase death, disease and the economic costs due to tobacco use, primarily by making cigarettes and tobacco products cheaper, more accessible, more easily marketed and promoted," Omi was quoted as saying by AP.

"There are some things we should not be globalizing. The tobacco epidemic is one of them," said Omi.

The organization said tobacco killed about one person in 10 globally and disproportionately affected the poor. The organization recommended that ASEAN treat tobacco differently from other goods.

ASEAN started a free-trade area mechanism in early 2003, pledging to reduce tariffs within the boundaries of the member states to between zero percent and 5 percent by 2008. The agreement covers agricultural products, including tobacco.

Meanwhile, Niken Rachmad, spokesperson of PT HM Sampoerna, Indonesia's second-largest cigarette producer, said that the WHO's appeal was "not unusual."

"We'll see what will happen ... whether the appeal would be taken into action by the ASEAN countries. But I'm sure that such a move will be discussed first among the ASEAN countries before being implemented. If the countries adopt it as a regulation, we cannot do anything but abide by it," she told The Jakarta Post.

"Higher import tariffs means higher production costs, which will result in higher prices in tobacco or cigarettes. Our performance depends on people's purchasing power," she added.

Niken said Sampoerna exported tobacco to its factories in Malaysia, Myanmar and Brazil. Both Malaysia and Myanmar are members of ASEAN.

Indonesia's total exports of tobacco in 2003 were worth US$70.9 million, up from $66.5 million in 2002. The figure stood at $80.8 million in 2001. The cigarette industry in Indonesia is also among the largest taxpayers and employs a huge number of people. -- JP