The Administration for Indirect Taxation (ITA) of BiH in cooperation with the Association of Economists of the RS SWOT has been successfully implementing the “Stop Smuggling” campaign for three years, and the first indicators for this year indicate the visible results of the campaign in suppressing the so-called black market of tobacco and cigarettes in BiH.
Rade Šegrt from the Association of Economists SWOT said that this year’s data is still being summarized, but that the first indicators show that there was a greater issuance of excise stamps, the number of which was in decline until 2020, but in 2021 and 2022 it recorded growth. .
“We believe that the campaign, which ended these days, was successfully implemented and we will make a complete report when we summarize all the data,” said Šegrt during a meeting with journalists in Sarajevo.
Revenues from indirect taxes are extremely important for the fiscal stability of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and education, healthcare, road infrastructure, social benefits and the like are financed to a significant extent from these revenues. Illegal trade, in addition to reducing income in the budget, also creates unfair competition. Special emphasis in the “Stop Smuggling” campaign was on the illegal sale of tobacco and tobacco products.
Speaking about how the campaign was launched, Šegrt stated that they realized that there is a large share of the black market of products without excise stamps, which causes great damage to budgets at practically all levels in the country. According to some estimates, in the last four or five years it even exceeds one billion BAM.
“Every year, together with the ITA, we created certain videos in the form of messages that were sent to the general public through media companies, and we also worked harder through articles, texts, contributions, guest appearances on television and tried to point out these disastrous effects on the budget,” added the Segrt.
The black market, as Šegrt emphasized, causes great damage to budget inflows, but also to the consumers of tobacco products themselves, because tobacco of unknown origin can be many times more harmful than that of known and controlled origin.
