Islamabad, Pakistan, June 26, 2026: Fair Trade in Tobacco (FTT) has strongly questioned the latest campaign by the Sustainable Development Policy Institute (SDPI) and the Social Policy and Development Center (SPDC) demanding another increase in cigarette taxation and a new climate levy, saying the debate once again targets only Pakistan’s documented, tax-paying tobacco industry while largely avoiding the organized illegal cigarette economy.
Muhammad Amin, Chairman of Fair Trade in Tobacco, said the government must distinguish between legitimate public-health advocacy and donor-driven paid activism that repeatedly pressures compliant companies while refusing to confront operators that manufacture, smuggle, and sell cigarettes outside the tax net.
“Pakistan’s legal tobacco companies are registered, audited, monitored, subject to the Track and Trace System, and responsible for paying hundreds of billions of rupees in taxes. The illegal cigarette mafia pays no Federal Excise Duty, no sales tax on its undeclared production, ignores minimum-price requirements, bypasses health-warning rules, and openly undermines the state’s writ. Yet the loudest activist campaigns remain directed almost exclusively at the documented industry,” Ameen said.
He said this selective activism has consequences. When advocacy organizations demand successive tax increases without giving equal attention to enforcement, illegal manufacturing, and smuggling, they widen the price difference between legal and illegal cigarettes. This can push consumers toward cheaper, non-duty-paid products, weaken compliant businesses, and transfer market share and revenue to criminal and undocumented networks.
FTT noted that official and independent estimates differ substantially on the precise scale of cigarette-related tax theft. However, even the most conservative estimate confirms that the loss is enormous. The Federal Board of Revenue has previously estimated annual losses from illegal cigarettes at roughly Rs. 250 billion to Rs. 300 billion. At the same time, a federal minister later cited an FBR calculation of nearly Rs. 200 billion. SPDC’s own March 2026 policy brief estimated Rs. 115.6 billion. No credible organization can describe losses of this magnitude as a secondary concern.
“The central question is simple: why do these organizations organize repeated dialogues, issue recommendations and seek additional burdens for tax-paying manufacturers, but fail to mount a comparable national campaign against illegal factories, smuggled brands, unstamped packs, under-declared production and retail violations?” Ameen asked.
He said the concern becomes more serious because SDPI has publicly disclosed past tobacco-control projects undertaken with the Bloomberg Initiative and The Union. At the same time, SPDC’s March 2026 research states that it was funded by the Economics for Health team at Johns Hopkins University, a partner of Bloomberg Philanthropies’ tobacco initiative. Foreign funding is not automatically improper, he said, but it creates an undeniable obligation to provide complete transparency regarding funding, methodology, institutional interests, and the policy outcomes being pursued.
“Paid advocacy must not be presented as neutral national policy analysis without full disclosure. When a donor-supported ecosystem repeatedly attacks the legal sector but remains muted on the illegal cigarette mafia, the government is entitled to ask whose priorities are being advanced and who benefits from the resulting policy pressure,” Ameen said.
FTT called upon the federal government, the FBR, the Ministry of Finance, and the Ministry of National Health Services to examine the funding disclosures, research methodologies, institutional relationships, and policy influence of organizations engaged in tobacco-tax advocacy. It also urged the government to require public disclosure of donors and project financing whenever externally supported organizations seek to influence taxation or regulatory policy.
Ameen emphasized that FTT does not oppose public health, responsible regulation, or evidence-based taxation. It opposes one-sided policy activism that punishes compliance, ignores criminality, and allows the illegal cigarette mafia to expand behind a shield of selective silence.
“Pakistan needs one policy for the entire tobacco market: enforce the law, recover stolen taxes, shut illegal factories, stop smuggling, prosecute tax evaders, and protect documented economic activity. Anything less is not reform. It is an agenda that rewards illegality.”