Putin Urges Gradually Raising Tobacco, Alcohol Excise Taxes

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said the government should gradually raise excise taxes on alcohol and tobacco, coordinating measures to curb their harmful effects with Russia’s customs union partners Kazakhstan and Belarus.

“We have to raise them, of course, but very carefully, calmly,” Putin, who won a six-year term in the Kremlin in the March 4 presidential election, said at a government meeting in Moscow today. Sharp increases won’t “solve all our tasks,” he said.