Civil war helps tobacco sales boom скачать в хорошем качестве

Civil war helps tobacco sales boom

(18 Aug 2016) LEAD IN: Syria's conflict has caused more than a million refugees to flee to Lebanon, putting a huge strain on the Lebanese economy and its infrastructure. But the five-year Syrian civil war has been a boon for at least one economic sector; the tobacco industry. STORY-LINE: In the tobacco fields of Nabatieh, in southern Lebanon, Syrian workers harvest the leaves as fast as they can. Lebanon is experiencing a surge of smokers, with many Syrian refugees who've flooded in, lighting up locally-made tobacco products. According to the UN's refugee agency, there are over a million Syrian refugees in the country of just four and a half million. The huge influx has led to an increase in the demand for cigarettes in Lebanon where the state-owned Regie Libanaise des Tabacs et Tombac company, better known as Regie, maintains the tobacco manufacture monopoly. Tobacco farmer Abbas Khraibani says Regie asked the farmers to increase production five years ago. "We used to produce 4,000 kilogrammes, and then Regie (tobacco company) told us to increase the amount as much as you can plant. We planted until it reached 6,000 to 7,000 kilogrammes. And thanks to God, we are managing and we do not rent other workers or anyone," he says. Soon these leaves will be dried and shipped off to be made into the addictive product, which is especially harmful to people's health. At Lebanon's main tobacco factory, located southeast of the capital, employees work round-the-clock but can barely cover the high demand. Millions of cigarettes, thousands of packs by the minute. In the months following the outbreak of war in March 2011, many of Syria's cigarette factories closed down. Others were not able to cover market demand after imports of tobacco stopped, leading to a sharp rise in demand for Lebanese cigarettes, particularly Cedars, a brand that is similar to Syria's widely-smoked Hamra cigarettes. George Hobeika, a member of Regie's board of directors, is in his office overlooking Beirut's international airport. He says sales peaked at one billion dollars in 2012. Later that year, Syrians began importing cheaper brands of cigarettes through their ports, leading to a drop in imports from Lebanon. "We were able to benefit for a couple of months, and not more than that - around six or seven months. We export Cedars of a special type and other foreign brands from Lebanon to Syria, because of the void in the Syrian market. We benefited from this. You can see from 2012, our sales reached to 1.5 million boxes (of cigarettes); whereas, it should be 1 million boxes. So 500,000 boxes were exported to Syria." He says they're lucky there are Syrians in Lebanon, adding that consumption of some local brands has more than tripled in five years. Unofficially, the number of Syrians who have fled to Lebanon is estimated to be closer to two million. Many of them are unable to find work, and spend much of their day smoking in tented encampments or makeshift accommodation around the country. Regie is the only firm authorised to produce and import cigarettes and tobacco in Lebanon and is a rare success story among the country's often dysfunctional state companies. It is one of the few institutions to bring money into the state's coffers. All the machines are functioning at nearly maximum capacity and Italian engineers are installing a new machine that is expected to boost production by 12,000 cigarettes a minute within weeks. The head of services at this factory, Fadi Ghanimeh, says Regie wants to accumulate a buffer stock for future sales. Find out more about AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/HowWeWork Twitter:   / ap_archive   Facebook:   / aparchives   ​​ Instagram:   / apnews   You can license this story through AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/metadata/you...