TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - Secretary-General of the National Commission on Tobacco Control (YLKI) and the chair of the Empowered Consumer Forum Indonesia, Tulus Abadi, said that the average Indonesian in cities and villages allocates 10 to 11 percent of their total expenditure for cigarette purchases.
"The budget is much higher than those allotted for food purchases, which only account for 3.4 percent," Tulus said in a written statement on Saturday, May 31, 2025.
Tulus said cigarette consumption behavior is inseparable from poverty. Based on data from Statistics Indonesia (BPS), high smoking consumption patterns resulted in a poverty prevalence in Indonesia of 8.57 percent, or 24.7 million people, in 2024.
According to World Bank poverty parameters, more than 60 percent of the Indonesian population live below the poverty line due to their daily expenditure of less than Rp115,000. Nevertheless, cigarette purchases reach 11 percent of said expenditure. "A study also strongly indicates that the economic cost of smoking reaches Rp410.75 trillion, or about 2.59 percent of the GDP," Tulus said.
Tulus said that the high cigarette consumption in Indonesian society is also caused by lax tobacco control. This is because Indonesia has yet to ratify the international Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, despite more than 90 percent of countries already having done so.
Even though there are national regulations in the form of Government Regulation Number 28 of 2024 regarding tobacco consumption control, Tulus lamented how the regulation has stalled. "It is strongly suspected that the cigarette industry interfered to weaken the implementation of Government Regulation 28/2024," he said.
As a mitigation effort, Tulus urged the government to significantly raise cigarette taxes. This should be accompanied by reforming the tax system, since raising the tax rate often does not impact supervision due to a system designed to benefit the industry. "There is also a widespread phenomenon of illegal cigarettes, namely untaxed cigarettes or counterfeit taxed cigarettes," he said.
Tulus said it is impossible for the government to achieve the demographic bonus target by 2030 and the Golden Indonesia 2045 vision if Indonesia still faces a cigarette consumption emergency. "There must be radical steps to mitigate this human-made disaster, which is triggered by the high prevalence of cigarette consumption, from escalating further," he said.
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