Thailand
Country engagements
As part of the World Health Organization (WHO) and Thaihealth collaboration on Noncommunicable diseases and their risk factors, WHO engaged with the Ministry of Thailand upon their request. WHO examined their excise system on all tobacco products to find out ways of improving the system so that as the consumption for tobacco decreases while the government revenue stream is protected. Thailand has a mixed system with an uniform ad valorem and specific excises, but specific tax has not been activated yet. Furthermore, Thailand has little or no tax on roll your own cigarettes where the prevalence rate of using RYO is as high as cigarettes. That concerns the government with respect to its revenue stream and collaborated with WHO to explore areas of improving the current excise system, implementation and administration. As part of this collaboration Ministry of Finance agreed to send a tax official as a secondment to WHO to help the global tobacco tax issues.