Introduction Lao PDR is a country of 6.6 million people, with a single-party socialist government. It is one of the poorest countries in the world, ranked at No. 139 in the United Nations Human Development Index in 2018.[1] About 34% of the population live on USD 1.25 a day and about 28% live below the …
The ASEAN region has become the tobacco industry’s target as an important market for tobacco products. The region has a large population of over 600 million people,[1] about 40% of whom are smokers[2]. While global tobacco consumption has been increasing between 1980 and 2016,[3] in the ASEAN region it has ballooned to more than 100 …
Vietnam’s tobacco industry currently consists of 30 companies consolidated under six corporations. These corporations are invested in diverse industries, but tobacco production and trading are their major businesses and are either “government or public owned and belonging to the central or a local government, a ministry, or the Communist Party”.[1] Established in 1985, the Vietnam …
Update May 2020 The Tobacco Authority of Thailand (TAOT), formerly called the Thai Tobacco Monopoly (TTM), is a state-owned enterprise registered as a government agency under the supervision of the Ministry of Finance in Thailand. TAOT operates in the tobacco production and distribution business. Since its establishment in 1939, TTM grew steadily and took the biggest cigarette …
Businesses that remain State-owned include those considered essential for national security and the maintenance of public order, implementation of poverty eradication, or to guarantee the supply of goods and services that would not be viable for private enterprises such as energy, telecommunications, aviation, and banking.[1] In ASEAN, active State-owned tobacco enterprises are Lao Tobacco Limited …
The tobacco industry uses scare tactics to intimidate governments and fight stringent tobacco control measures, falsely claiming that such measures will cause job loses, kill the industry, and harm government investments. In reality, regardless of the strength of tobacco regulations, the tobacco business is flourishing in the ASEAN region spurring transnational tobacco companies (TTCs), in …