Sri Mulyani gave incentives to postpone payment of special stamps for white cigarettes

Reporter: Yusuf Imam Santoso | Editor: Tendi Mahadi

KONTAN.CO.ID – JAKARTA. Finance Minister (Menkeu) Sri Mulyani Indrawati said the government would offer incentives to postpone paying special stamps for automatic white cigarettes (SPM) or white cigarettes.

Three quarters of money, the white cigarette industry can settle the payment of excise stamps in ninety days, earlier only sixty days. The minister said that this incentive will take effect from February 1, 2020.

Sri Mulyani said that the incentive aims, among others, to encourage cigarette exports. According to him, the potential of Indonesian cigarettes is quite large in the last four years.

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The Ministry of Finance (Kemenkeu) records that SPM exports in 2019 reached 81.4 billion bars. This figure is 14.8% more than in 2016 which amounted to 70.9 billion sticks.

“We will continue to promote this industry, even if the production is for export, the government will provide facilities to postpone the payment of special tax stamps for the sales of companies that are predominantly exporters,” said the Finance Minister at the press conference of 2021 excise policy, Friday (11/12).

The minister emphasized that this incentive is expected to provide a stimulus for white cigarette companies to export rather than circulate domestically.

This is in line with efforts to control the prevalence of smoking in general, which is expected to decline from 33.8% to 33.2% in 2021. Meanwhile, the prevalence of smoking in children aged 10 to 18 years will decline at a level of 8.7% in 2024.

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For your information, next year the government set an increase in the average rate of tobacco income tax (CHT) by 12.5%. On average, the highest PMS rate compared to other types of cigarettes, that is, for PMS group I 18.4%, PMS group IIA reached 16.5% and PMS group IIB which is 18.1%.