The Finance Ministry of Indonesia will study whether the price of a package of cigarettes can be raised to IDR 50,000 (approx. USD $3.8), almost twice as high as the current average price of a package of cigarettes in Indonesia. The price hike would help the government to reduce a looming tax shortfall and discourage people from consuming their death sticks. The Tobacco Atlas estimates that there are 53.7 million active adult smokers and 2.6 million active youth smokers in Indonesia. Hence, Indonesia is the third-largest cigarette consumer (after China and Russia).

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Indonesia and four other countries have filed an official complaint to the World Trade Organization (WTO) over a recent new law in Australia. This law (‘2011 Tobacco Plain Packaging Act’), in effect since 1 December 2012, requires the removal of all branding (such as colours, imagery, and corporate logos) on cigarette packages. Indonesia’s Trade Ministry believes that the law violates several WTO rules, such as an agreement on trade-related aspects of intellectual property rights and an agreement on the technical barriers to trade.

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The Indonesian government is advised to make a new roadmap for the cigarette (and tobacco-related products) industry that includes targets for the short, middle and long-term. Moreover, the roadmap should involve strategies that aim to find a middle way between reducing cigarette consumption (protecting citizens' health) in Indonesia while at the same time optimizing lucrative state revenue from this industry (as well as safeguarding the jobs of the nearly six million of Indonesians who are working in the cigarette supply chain).

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