Cigarette smuggling costs Sri Lanka Rs.18bn in tax revenue in 2017

The government may have lost Rs.18 billion in cigarette tax revenue as a record 583 million illicit cigarettes were estimated to have smuggled into Sri Lanka in 2017, driven by the high taxes on legal cigarettes and the absence of a proper mechanism in place to combat the illicit cigarette inflows, according to a latest research report on Sri Lanka’s illicit cigarette market.