A senior Catholic Church official is backing moves in Congress to further raise sin taxes in the succeeding year.
In his radio program, former Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines president and Dagupan Archbishop Emeritus Oscar Cruz lauded House Bill No. 4144 as a “pro-health” measure.
The bill aims to increase further existing excise tax rate from P30 to P32 per pack on low-end cigarette packs and P36 for premium brands priced 11.50 above. It also imposes a higher 5 percent annual increase beginning 2018, up from the original 4 percent stated in the current law.
“It is the government’s duty to protect the health of its citizens aside from raising revenues,” he said.
The vocal archbishop cited data from the Social Weather Station that 10 Filipinos die every hour daily from smoking-related diseases.
He stressed that the government’s objective was to ultimately stop smoking and urge citizens to spend their earnings on food and other important needs.
“I don’t see anything wrong with it [HB 4144] because it discourages smokers to quit… It’s okay because [especially] the poor end up saving their money instead of spending it on vices such as cigarettes and alcohol,” Cruz said in his Veritas Patrol interview.
Archbishop Emeritus Diosdado Talamayan of the Archdiocese of Tuguegarao commended lawmakers for passing the bill.
He noted that aside from the good intentions that the bill aims to achieve, it helps the livelihood of our local farmers.
“The Northern region is a tobacco-rich province where many farmers depend on the crop to improve the lives of their families,” the Cagayan native added.
Moreover, according to Talamayan, it keeps the youth and poor sector away from the vice.
Economist Frank Chaloupka, an internationally respected scientist in the area of tobacco control, indicated that smoking was most prevalent among the poor sectors of society.
His research has consistently demonstrated that increases in the price of tobacco products are followed by a fall in percentage of people smoking, and the amount of tobacco products that remaining smokers consume.
Nobel prize winning economist Gary Becker and colleagues Michael Grossman and Kevin M. Murphy demonstrated in their study as early as 30 years ago that the youth and poor were particularly sensitive to price increases.
The youth sector falls under the zero to low-income category because some do not have work or had just started work, while the others are not yet fully settled to be financially independent.
