Hany Aman, CEO and managing director of the eastern company, said that the real price of Cleopatra cigarettes is 7 pounds from the company without taxes and health insurance fees, and with the addition of these taxes and fees, the official price for the consumer reaches 24 pounds
Aman added, during an intervention with the Nahar TV program, that this real price without taxes and fees includes all the cost that belongs to the company, including the import of raw materials and their manufacture, wages of the company's employees and other costs
He explained that this comes at a time when some traders are currently making gains above the consumer price up to 4 times their real price without taxes or fees, which are suspicious and abnormal increases and may have goals greater than just greed from some traders
The markets in Egypt are witnessing significant increases in the unofficial prices of a number of popular cigarette varieties and other items that are most traded among smokers in Egypt, amid the disappearance of some of these types in a number of regions of the Republic
Aman pointed out that among the reasons for the crisis of rising cigarette prices, some merchants resorted to stockpiling quantities of cigarettes with the habit of raising taxes on cigarettes in some years at the beginning of the fiscal year, in order to sell them to exploit the difference in the value of taxes
He said that consumers also raised their requests for cigarettes more after the crisis appeared in order to secure their needs for fear of not being able to get the product again at the same prices, which led to an unreal demand from the consumer, which contributed to the aggravation of the crisis with increasing demand, calling on consumers to deal normally as it was before the crisis
Aman said that a large number of cigarette dealers in the Bab al-Bahr area of Cairo (known for selling wholesale cigarettes) are not registered with the company, and sell quantities of cigarettes between the smuggled and what was collected from the market in order to control it
He explained that the company will pump more volumes of cigarettes to the markets during this week by about 150 million cigarettes, i.e. between 7 and 8 million packs per day, an increase of between 20 and 30% from what was pumped, expecting market conditions to gradually improve over a period of 3 to 4 weeks
The eastern company's market share of the cigarette market in Egypt is between 70 and 75%, according to Aman
Source : Pulse location
