The Belarusian government issued a decree on the quotas for cigarette import for the year 2006. The volume of the cigarette import is once again reduced to 1.5 billion sticks, exactly as was initially determined for the current year.

This year’s quota, however, has been raised twice ever since, after the market saw considerable shortage of cigarette supplies. The consumption of imported tobacco products in Belarus makes up 4 to 4.5 billion sticks per year. The import limitation is meant to induce foreign cigarette makers to place production in Belarus, the ministry of commerce explains. Since the beginning of the year, JTI has started manufacturing of three of its international brands at the Minsk-based joint venture Tabak-Invest, and BAT placed production of Alliance with the Neman tobacco plant of Grodno. (vt)