"The urgency of increasing the excise is to prevent the public from easily obtaining cigarettes with a cheap price in Indonesia," Benget Saragih, a member of the ministry's working team for tobacco disease control, said during a virtual discussion on Friday.
Therefore, regulations and policies to increase cigarette prices by raising excise tariffs are necessary to save the younger generation and achieve the 2045 Golden Indonesia goal, he added.
"Our recommendation is to reduce access to cigarettes by increasing excise and simplifying tobacco products through excise increase policies," Saragih said.
The government has issued Government Regulation (PP) Number 28 of 2024 concerning the Implementation of the Health Law, which aims to improve promotive and preventive services to keep people from falling sick.
The regulation also seeks to reduce the number of active smokers under the age of 21 through concrete policies, both fiscal and non-fiscal, he informed.
"If our 2025–2029 targets are aligned with the regulation, we will reduce the prevalence of smokers aged 21 and under. This requires policies both from non-fiscal and fiscal," he explained.
He observed that compared to neighboring countries such as Singapore, the number of active smokers in Indonesia is fairly large at 37.9 percent of the total population of 270 million.
With this figure, Indonesia ranks 13th in the world in terms of cigarette consumption, Saragih said.
Given the large number of smokers, Indonesians are at risk of contracting diseases resulting from active and passive cigarette consumption, such as heart disease, cancer, and stroke, he pointed out.
Nowadays, young people in Indonesia are becoming prone to heart disease due to unhealthy food consumption and lifestyle as well as excessive cigarette consumption, Saragih noted.
The number of deaths caused by cigarette consumption has reached eight million per year. Seven million of the deaths are due to active smoking and the remaining 1.2 million due to passive smoking, he added.
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Translator: Chairul Rohman, Resinta Sulistiyandari
Editor: Azis Kurmala
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