Sri Mulyani Raises Excise On Cigarettes, Sampoerna Shares And Fire Salt Warehouse

JAKARTA - Minister of Finance (Menkeu) Sri Mulyani Indrawati said that next year's cigarette excise rates will increase by 12.5 percent. This directly affected the stock prices of two national cigarette issuers, PT HM Sampoerna (HMSP) and PT Gudang Garam Tbk (GGRM).

The increase in cigarette excise rates was deemed unfavorable for HMSP and GGRM because the two issuers mostly earned revenue from the SKM segment.

Based on RTI data quoted by VOI, HMSP's shares plunged 6.96 percent to a level of Rp1,670 per share at the close of trading on Thursday, December 10. Earlier at the close of trading Wednesday December 9, HMSP's shares were at the level of Ro1,795 per share.

As for GGRM's shares at the close of trading today, it was recorded to have weakened 6.99 percent to the level of IDR44,275 per share. On the previous day, Gudang Garam's shares were at the level of IDR47,600 per share.

For information, the increase in excise rates on machine-made kretek cigarettes (SKM) for class I was 16.9 percent, machine-clove cigarettes II A were 13.8 percent, and machine-clove cigarettes II B was 15.4 percent.

On the other hand, Sri Mulyani also emphasized that the government did not carry out group simplification. The strategy applied is to reduce the tariff gap between SKM Class II A and SKM class II B. The government also reduces the tariff gap between SPM class II A and SPM class II B.