Industry Tobacco Type of business Private | Headquarters Metro Manila, Philippines | |
Key people Rodolfo F. Salanga (President) | ||
The Philippine Tobacco Institute, Inc. is private organization incorporated under Philippine law. It represents, expresses and effects the opinions of the tobacco industry in the Philippines. Collectively, its members form "the strongest tobacco lobby in Asia". The organization has been very successful in curbing the Philippine government's efforts to implement tobacco regulation. Since 2007, eleven legal cases have been filed by the tobacco industry against proposed government oversight; the courts have ruled in the industry's favor in all of these cases.
The Philippine Tobacco Institute has expressed its opinion on tobacco control when it submitted a position paper to the World Health Organization during the proposal for the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control in 2000. The PTI also sits as a member of the Inter-Agency Committee-Tobacco (IAC-T), an agency with exclusive authority to regulate the packaging, use, sale, distribution, and advertisement of tobacco products, prompting health advocates and the Southeast Asia Tobacco Control Alliance (SEATCA) to call for its removal from the regulating body. In response, the tobacco industry labels the perception that the presence of PTI in the IAC-T is a violation of the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control as a "myth".
The PTI has also lobbied for the Bureau of Internal Revenue to reject a tax stamp system for cigarette packs and successfully reduced the size of graphic warning labels on cigarette packages.
Members
The Philippine Tobacco Institute is a trade association composed of leading tobacco companies in the Philippines. Some of its members over the years have included:
A few of its member companies have since merged, such as Philip Morris Philippines Manufacturing and Fortune Tobacco Corporation, which formed PMFTC in 2010.