Perspectives on the WCO 2020 Illicit Trade Report: Tobacco

The World Customs Organisation (WCO) has released the annual update of its Illicit Trade Report (ITR). Reports were submitted by 86 countries – up significantly from 54 countries in 2018, making it more representative than previous iterations.

Excisable product seizures per commodity, 2019 (source: WCO Illicit Trade Report 2019).

This report is of particular interest because it begins to give some insights into the state of illicit tobacco after the coming into force of the EU Tobacco Products Directive (TPD) from May 2019.

The conclusions rely on data voluntarily submitted by WCO member countries, who may choose to not report, or under-report, their data (for instance, in order to maintain secrecy over ongoing investigations). As a result, the dataset is not necessarily complete. Nonetheless, the reported trends do raise a number of interesting perspectives.

In 2019, countries reported 26,285 cases resulting in 32,426 seizures of smuggled alcohol, cigarettes and other tobacco products. While there was an overall 2.6% decrease in the number of seizure cases, a 10.5% increase was reported in tobacco seizures from 2018 – representing either an increase in smuggling, or efforts to curb it.