This article will bring you to the list of the countries with highest cigarette consumption in the world. Insider Monkey has recently published an interesting article about it. As I smoke I usually read articles in connection with smoking or cigarettes. I extremely like analytics, surveys etc. This compilation Insider Monkey has come up with was really great to check out.
Between 2005 and 2016, Asia-Pacific’s position on the global cigarette market expanded to 64% of the total sales from 55%, while Middle East and Africa saw an increase to 9% from 7%. It should be noted that seven of the top 15 countries with highest cigarette consumption in the world are from the Asia-Pacific region. On the other hand, Western and Eastern Europe accounted for 9% and 10% of the global cigarette sales in 2016, down from 12% and 13%, respectively, in 2005. North America’s share of the market slid by three percentage points to 5% during the same period.
Now without a further ado let’s see what Insider Monkey has investigated for us. We have picked three countries with highest cigarette consumption in the world from their list.
The first one is Spain. Spanish cigarette market has been pretty flat in the last couple of years, despite the economic growth. Similar to many European countries, the cigarette market continues to be severely affected by sales of contraband cigarettes that are smuggled from countries that are outside the EU and have much lower prices. According to Euromonitor International, nearly 90% of the cigarette market is dominated by three big tobacco companies which are present on the market through their subsidiaries: Philip Morris Spain, Altadis (a subsidiary of Imperial Tobacco), and Japan Tobacco International Iberia. The next country on our list now is Italy. Similar to Spain, the Italian cigarette market is controller by three major tobacco companies: Philip Morris International Inc. (NYSE:PM), Japan Tobacco Inc, and British American Tobacco PLC (ADR) (NYSE:BTI), which in aggregate have a market share of around 89%. According to Euromonitor, the Italian cigarette market was helped by the influx of refugees, which helped offset the decline caused by the smoking bans in bars and restaurants. At last, but not least we are mentioning Ukraine for today. In Ukraine, the cigarette market has been affected by increases of some taxes on cigarettes by 40% and stricter control on tobacco products from the government. However, a major factor that affects retail sales of cigarettes in Ukraine is the smuggling of cigarettes in the EU countries, mainly bordering Poland, which have been on the rise on the back of growing cigarette prices in the EU.
