Together Calls on Govt to Withdraw New Tobacco Bill

Budapest, November 15 (MTI) – The opposition Together (Egyutt) party has called on the government to withdraw its plan to introduce a bill on tobacco trade.

Viktor Szigetvari, the party’s co-leader, told a news conference on Saturday that the bill, which he dubbed “tobacco law 2”, which seeks to place a middleman between retailers and wholesalers, was “unnecessary”.

He added that the law was only good for the Fidesz government to put a middleman in place with a view to nationalising the wholesale trade of tobacco.

Szigetvari insisted that it had become apparent with the publication of balance sheets at the end of May that the reorganisation of state concessions for tobacconist retailers had been a “failure”. A significant number of retailers had made losses and were struggling with serious liquidity problems.

It is also clear, he added, that the government’s restructuring of the sector had produced a “shockingly large” loss in tax revenues, in the tens of billions of forints, due to an ever bigger black market derived from cigarette smuggling. He called on the government to thwart the spread of illegal tobacco trade in Hungary rather than bring in a new law.

Source: http://mtva.hu/hu/hungary-matters