Bangladesh
Country Engagements
The World Health Organization (WHO) has an ongoing engagement with the National Board of Revenue (NBR) of the Ministry of Finance of the Government of Bangladesh since March, 2010. As part of this collaboration, WHO has been working closely with the officials from indirect tax department who are in charge of tobacco supplementary (excise) duties. With the announcement by the Finance Minister of Bangladesh during the budget speech of fiscal year 2010/11, NBR established a tobacco tax cell within NBR to improve the data collection and tax policy analysis for tobacco products in Bangladesh, so that the design and formulation of tobacco tax policy can be supported by evidence. As for example, in 2012, NBR and WHO jointly initiated a research project on bidi market in order to understand the characteristics of bidi market including level of production and employment in bidi sector.