It’s going to cost you a lot more to light up. The excise duty on cigarettes is up 72% for cigarettes less than 65 mm, and 11% to 21% on other cigarettes.
Chewing Tobacco and Gutkha see rates go up 60% to 70%. Pan masala too goes up.
This should have hit ITC hard, but the stock didn’t hurt much, actually closing up 0.4% at 344.
A smaller cigarette company, VST Industries, which makes the shorter Charms and Charminar brands, fell 16% on the news.
On another note, Aerated waters containing sugar will now pay a duty of 5%. This means your regular pepsi and coke consumption needs to be cut as well.
It’s not just the government finances they plan to make healthy. But Mr. Jaitley himself isn’t in the pink of it – he had to take a 5 minute break mid-way into his speech, and delivered the rest of it sitting down. Now if we had a tax on overweight politicians….