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Egypt's Eastern Tobacco EAST.CA posted a 20.7 percent rise in nine-month net profit to 556.4 million Egyptian pounds ($103.9 million), the stock exchange said in a statement.
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After a period of relative stability, cigarettes will now be sold at higher prices as part of the newly declared price hikes the government instituted to finance public sector wage increases.
The ubiquitous local Cleopatra brand will now sell for LE 3 up from LE 2.25. At the opposite end of the spectrum Marlboro brands have seen a LE 1.5 increase from LE 7.50 to LE 9.
Brands such as Rothmans and L&M have also seen an increase of at least one pound to reach LE 5.5.
Egyptians on Tuesday criticized fuel and cigarette price increases meant to fund a 30 percent hike in government salaries, worried the latest move by the authorities will once again leave them struggling to buy basic goods. . . .
Then, parliament late Monday passed a bill to muster up the US$3.6 billion needed for the salary raises. It increased taxes and cigarette prices . . .
Prime Minister Ahmed Nazif promised the parliament bill won't burden the low income class, but on Cairo streets, many were feeling the pinch. The cost of cigarettes, a necessity for many in this country of heavy smokers, went up by about 10 percent.
Mustafa Fathy said he would drop his brand, Marlboro, which now costs 9 Egyptian pounds, or US$1.70, for the local Cleopatra, at 3.50 Egyptian pounds, or 60 cents a pack.
The Egyptian government has passed a bill to raise taxes and fuel prices only days after President Hosni Mubarak proposed a 30 percent salary increase for government employees. The move comes as Egypt is facing its worst social crisis over rising prices since Anwar El Sadat was president.
Under the proposal, gasoline prices will rise by as much as 50 percent. Natural gas will increase 58 percent. Smokers will be hit as well with a 10 percent rise in the cost of a pack of cigarettes.
Egypt's parliament approved steep increases in fuel and cigarette prices and vehicle licence fees on Monday to cover the costs of public-sector pay hikes that President Hosni Mubarak proposed last week. . . .
The price of foreign-brand cigarettes would rise by up to 20 percent, against about 10 percent for local brands.
The smoking of the traditional `shisha' water pipe is increasingly emerging as a significant health risk in Egypt, due to air-borne tuberculosis (TB) transmission from pipe sharing and uncontrolled, manual preparation of the pipe.
Rania Siam, professor of microbiology at the American University in Cairo (AUC), said the most important risk factor for TB infection was close household contact with a TB case, but she said water pipe smoking (WPS) and the sharing of the pipe with someone with pulmonary TB led to a great risk of TB transmission, especially among young adolescents.
"`Shisha' [smoking] is Egyptian culture, where people smoke tobacco and inhale directly from this device. If I smoke `shisha', some bacteria may reside in it.
Gaza is a small place, and news spread quickly Wednesday that the border fence was knocked down before dawn. Pretty soon, I was caught up in a traffic jam as people raced to Rafah in buses, cars, motorcycles. Some even rode bicycles and donkey carts. . . .
Cigarettes, which ordinarily sell for about $1.90 a pack in Gaza City, soared from an initial 80 cents on the Egyptian side of Rafah to $2.70 at their peak.
Authorities in tobacco-mad Egypt have begun slapping on-the-spot fines on people caught smoking at Cairo airport, the official MENA news agency reported on Tuesday.
It said that 100 people -- including passengers and airport workers -- had been fined between 50 and 100 Egyptian pounds (nine to 18 dollars, or six to 12 euros) since the campaign began three days ago.
Although smoking is already banned at Egyptian airports, hospitals and schools and in some other public places "No Smoking" signs are largely ignored.
Eastern Co., Egypt's tobacco monopoly, said its first-quarter profit advanced 6.9 percent. It didn't give a reason for the gain.
Eastern Co., Egypt's monopoly cigarette maker, said annual profit advanced 37 percent, without giving a reason for the gain.
The campaign against smoking scored a winner this week when the new tobacco law made it through the People's Assembly (PA). The law incorporates the new amendments, proposed by Hamdi El-Sayed, chairman of the PA's Health Committee and head of the Doctors' Syndicate. These include a ban on smoking in indoor areas and on the sale of tobacco to those under the age of 18. All forms of tobacco advertising will be prohibited, and a 10 per cent increase added to the price of cigarettes. A detailed health warning will also cover 50 per cent of the pack on both sides. "The price hike is important in order to discourage youngsters from smoking and to decrease smoking in general, and reduce tobacco sales," El-Sayed said.
Established in 1920, Eastern Tobacco produces cigarettes and tobacco products on behalf of international brands and benefits from a complete market monopoly on domestic cigarette production.
Analysts estimate that Eastern produces 92% of the cigarettes sold in Egypt and controls 55-60% of the market for shisha tobacco.
The social pursuit of smoking shisha has undergone a huge resurgence over the past few decades particularly in the Eastern Mediterranean, South East Asia, and North Africa regions, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO).
Even in the US and Europe, its popularity has soared with many cafes offering shisha (narghile, water pipe, hookah, hubble bubble are just a few of its pseudo names) and in some countries, shisha has defied public smoking (cigarette) bans.
Smoking shisha however may not only be as dangerous as smoking cigarettes (according to the WHO), but has added health hazards due to the heat involved and the charcoal burning (releasing more cancer-causing substances and heavy metals) and sharing of the pipe (infectious agents such as tuberculosis, hepatitis A, Helicobacter pylori, pulmonary aspergillosis, may be spread by sharing the pipe).
A Palestinian customs inspector carried an armload of cigarette cartons he had just seized from a Palestinian traveler at the Gaza-Egypt border and dropped them in a room for confiscated goods.
For European monitors stationed at the border's Rafah terminal, such scenes are proof that the Palestinian-controlled crossing, Gaza's only gateway to the world, is operating properly. They say contraband is caught in meticulous checks -- though they acknowledge they can't stop the flow of cash to the Hamas-led government. . . .
The most popular contraband is cigarettes, with 3,000 to 5,000 cartons seized every day, a German customs inspector said. Only two cartons are allowed per person, but with cigarettes costing 10 times as much in Gaza as in Egypt, the temptation is overpowering.
A single session smoking Egypt's popular shisha waterpipes yields a nicotine intake equivalent to more than one pack of cigarettes, the World Health Organization said on Wednesday.
Many Egyptians smoke shisha in the belief that forcing the smoke through the pipes' water container filters out some of the toxins in the nicotine. Not so, according to Hussein Gezairy, Regional Director for the World Health Organization.
"There's been a widespread false belief for decades now that shishas are less harmful and addictive than cigarettes," Gezairy said at a news conference announcing the release of the first report on the hazards of smoking Egypt's ubiquitous waterpipes.
But shisha smoke retained all the carcinogens of cigarette smoke while adding more carbon monoxide and a separate set of carcinogens from the use of burning coals to keep the nicotine flowing, coupled with the risk of infection with tuberculosis or hepatitis from shared mouthpieces, Gezairy said.
"A regular user of waterpipe...smokes 2-3 sessions per day. This translates into intake of nicotine equivalent to more than one pack of cigarettes per session for most waterpipe smokers," the study said.