According to newspaper Business Chronicle, the smuggling of cigarette products into Ghana, just like the textile industry, is on the increase.

As of December 2005, the market share of contraband cigarette was 6 per cent. However, this reportedly increased by about 200 per cent, creating a market share of 17.5 per cent in Ghana. This has dwindled British American Tobacco's (BAT's) market share from 86 per cent to about 80 per cent, hence reducing government's revenue from the industry.
Of the 17.5 per cent of cigarettes smuggled into the country, Bond Full Flavour and Bond Menthol brands manufactured by Philip Morris International are taking 10 per cent with Marlboro taking the rest.
If BAT is contributing about 300 billion cedis a year to the government's internally generated revenue, then, government is losing about 63 billion cedis a year from the cigarettes smuggled into the country.
According to BAT sources, smuggled cigarettes such as Bond are sold in Accra, Kumasi and Tamale but not yet in Takoradi. Information available shows children and women are at the retail level.
Smuggling of cigarette products into the country has become one of the stumbling blocks to the government generating enough revenue for the state as taxes and levies. About 160 million sticks of cigarette are smuggled into the country every year without payment of duties therefore leading to those huge losses to government.
Reasons offered for this state of affairs were the porous nature of the country's borders especially from the Eastern frontier; inadequate logistics for the CEPS to undertake proper valuation and the non-enforceability of laws on smuggling. It is also believed that cigarettes are cheaper in Togo than in Ghana and they therefore smuggled into Ghana for a higher price.
BAT in 2004 contributed 280 billion cedis to government's revenue base. It currently employs 252 full time employees and has 1,300 registered tobacco farmers. These farmers in 2004 had income of approximately 22.2 billion cedis.
BAT has 13 distributors, 1,791 wholesalers and 20,000 retailers who earned 100 billion cedis in 2004.
During its last annual general meeting, BAT announced plans to rigorously turn around the fortunes of the company after registering an 18 per cent decline in profit before tax last year. The difficult trading environment and the availability of smuggled and uncustomed cigarette products were described as factors that prevented BAT from increasing prices in line with inflation, thus the decline in profit.
It is not only Ghana that contraband cigarettes are smuggled into other African countries. Smuggling of cigarette has cost South Africa about R 466 million in lost excise and customs duties and VAT between 2002 and 2004.
Since April this year, about 18 million cigarettes valued at more than R12-million, have been confiscated by anti-smuggling officials, says the South African Revenue Services (SARS). (pi)