KUALA LUMPUR, Feb 28 — Putrajaya’s plan to introduce generic packaging for tobacco products will only worsen Malaysia’s illegal cigarettes problem, Japan Tobacco International (JTI) Malaysia said today.

In an emailed statement to Malay Mail Online, the tobacco firm said the Malaysian market has “extremely high levels” of illegal tobacco, with approximately 40 per cent of cigarette sales said to be contraband.

“With one of the highest illegal cigarettes rates in the world, the implementation of plain packaging in Malaysia would only worsen the situation given plain packaging offers opportunities for counterfeiting of legal products,” Azrani Rustam, JTI Malaysia’s Director of Corporate Affairs and Communications, told Malay Mail Online in the email.

Azrani also said an Australian government report last week on the country’s plain packaging policy “covers very little” on its impact on the illegal cigarette trade, which he said should be considered in discussions on using similar policies for Malaysia.

In a separate press release by JTI, the firm claimed the Australian Department of Health’s Post-Implementation Review (PIR) of the Tobacco Plain Packaging Act “comes to the shaky conclusion that the measure will work over time even though it is unable to support this claim with credible analysis”.

“The report fails to properly take into account that smoking rates had been steadily declining for years,long before the introduction of this branding ban, and that the measure hasn’t accelerated this,” Michiel Reerink, JTI’s Regulatory Strategy Vice President, was quoted saying in the statement dated February 26.

Reerink said that smokers merely switched to cheaper cigarettes after plain packaging was introduced, which he said JTI had predicted in 2011 – over a year before the measure came into force in Australia.

“The PIR admits, however, that plain packaging on its own did not drive down smoking rates, as a number of measures — including massive tax increases — came into force in the same period,” he added.

Earlier this week, the Health Ministry told Malay Mail Online that Malaysia was planning to implement plain packaging for tobacco products, where colours and fonts would be standardised to reduce brand recognition.

According to plain packaging laws in Australia that were introduced in December 2012, tobacco company logos on cigarette packets are outlawed and the packets are a dull brown colour dominated by large graphic images of smoking-related diseases, with the brand name in standardised font.

On Thursday, the Confederation of Malaysian Tobacco Manufacturers (CMTM) said that tax increases and plain packaging had together caused a massive hike in the sale of branded illegal cigarettes, which it said showed the latter policy’s ineffectiveness.

“CMTM therefore has serious concerns about the potential for plain packaging to further increase the alarming level of illegal cigarettes trade in Malaysia, which already account for approximately 35 per cent of the overall market,” said the group comprising of British American Tobacco (Malaysia) Berhad, JTI and Philip Morris (Malaysia) Sdn Bhd.

“The government’s focus should instead be on further addressing the rampant illegal cigarettes trade rather than on introducing ineffective policies that are likely to make the situation worse,” added the tobacco companies.

Among other things, CMTM had also claimed that more cigarettes were sold in Australia in the first 12 months of the plain packaging policy than in the previous year, citing data from the Australian government.