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Health ministry mulls hiking tobacco tax by 10 yen per cigarette+
TOKYO, Oct. 30 (AP) - (Kyodo)—The Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare decided on Thursday to ask the government's tax panel to increase the tobacco tax by 10 yen per cigarette to raise funds to finance its social security measures, government sources said.
The hike would push up the price of a pack of 20 cigarettes from 300 yen to 500 yen.
The proposed hike, if realized, would be the first since fiscal 2006 when the government raised the tax by 0.85 yen per cigarette.
The government estimates tobacco tax revenues in fiscal 2009 at 2.08 trillion yen. The new hike would funnel an additional 440 billion yen into the national coffers in the initial year.
