Nearly half of all cigarettes in Norway are traded abroad – Dagbladet.no

Nearly half of all cigarettes in Norway are traded abroad – Dagbladet.no

Almost half of cigarettes, 47.2 percent, which was smoked in this country last year, was not traded via ordinary channels.

It shows a survey four international tobacco companies Philip Morris, Imperial Tobacco, British American Tobacco and JTI behind, writes Adresseavisen.

The survey shows that Trondheim has the highest proportion of cigarettes introduced from abroad, 53.6 percent, among the eight largest cities in Norway last year.

– The purpose of the survey is to identify the origin of cigarettes smoked in Norway, because we believe that the extent of cigarette smuggling is much larger than people realize and politicians will realize, says communications director Christian Angell Philip Morris Norway.

He refers to the Ministry of Finance estimates that approximately 35 percent of the cigarettes in this country originates from sources other than Norwegian outlets. He says that it is not necessarily so that all cigarettes are not sold in Norway are smuggled here, and that it is fully legal to buy cigarettes both duty and for example in Sweden.

– We do not take a position on how much of this as possible is above allowable quotas. But we think that something is not correct, if the survey shows that over 30 percent of all cigarettes originating from Poland and Romania. Overall now share cigarettes outside duty and import from Sweden soon on the same level, says Angell.

In 2013, the state took in just under 5.5 billion in taxes on legal sales of cigarettes.

(NTB)