The Serb government has adopted an action plan for the production and trade of tobacco and tobacco products at its session yesterday.

The document is to fully harmonise the domestic legislation with regulations from the Central European Free Trade Agreement (CEFTA) and the World Trade Organisation (WTO).
According to the Serbian minister of economy, Predrag Bubalo, that means excise taxes on domestic and imported cigarettes will be the same, but the government will increase import duties on cigarettes from 15 to 57.6 per cent. Bubalo pointed out that the new import duty would be implemented on 1 January 2008.
He also said that the action plan envisaged measures to ease present obligation of cigarette manufacturers for buying tobacco from domestic tobacco producers. These measures would entail abolition of the import duty of 10 per cent on their imports of raw materials for production of tobacco-based products.
The Serb government expects that Croatia will agree to cigarette imports and following ratification of CEFTA, there will be no obstacles to agreement between the two countries on trade in tobacco products under identical terms. The action plan is basically a platform for talks with other CEFTA countries. (cen)