Finance Minister Bill English may hike the excise on tobacco and alcohol to reduce a budget deficit forecasted at NZD 640 million (EUR 387 million), reports the New Zealand Herald.

Prime Minister John Key has already warned Cabinet will tighten the tax system, including tighter rules on property investment, and prune government spending in the budget next week.
Long-time smoker and New Zealand First leader Winston Peters has also predicted a rise in tobacco taxes as a certainty, especially as the government's wobbly political partner, the Maori Party, wants cigarette smoking stamped out in New Zealand by 2025. To achieve that goal, a  Ministry of Health discussion paper released last month modeled the impact on smokers' behavior if the price of a packet of 20 cigarettes rose to NZD 100 over the next eight years from around NZD 16 today, however, Prime Minister John Key moved quickly to stub out any thought of such a dramatic rise.
The Crown collected NZD 145 million in excise from locally produced tobacco and a further NZD 746 million from taxes on imported tobacco, according to the government's financial statements for the nine months ended 31 March. It made NZD 517 million from the excise on alcohol produced domestically and NZD 177 million on imported alcohol. (pi)