Higher Taxes Needed to Make Cigarettes Less Affordable and Increase Revenue: Pakistan Tobacco Fact Sheet 2025

This Fact Sheet was developed by Social Policy and Development Centre (SPDC) in Pakistan in collaboration with World Health Organization, Vital Strategies, and Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids. The fact sheet presents a tobacco tax proposal for 2025-26 that would maintain cigarette affordability at 2023-24 levels and reduce the tax rate gap between economy and premium brands. Specifically, the researchers propose increasing the FED rate by Rs 39 per pack for both price tiers- up to Rs 140 for economy brands and Rs 369 for premium brands. The findings show that this scenario would reduce cigarette consumption by 6.9% and the total number of smokers by 263,000. As a result, the number of premature smoking-attributable deaths would decrease by 264,000. Tax revenue, on the other hand, would increase by 17.9%, or Rs 67.4 billion. The fact sheet concludes with recommendations for policy makers to raise tobacco taxes to align with these best practices and implement other tobacco control strategies to effectively reduce consumption while raising revenues.