OREANDA-NEWS. On 04 May 2009 was announced, that cigarette output in Belarus decreased 5.2% on the year in January-March to 4.779 billion units, according to the National Statistics Committee.

Grodno-based state-run Neman produced 3.19 billion cigarettes, down 0.7% on the year. Privately-owned Tabak-Invest, based in Minsk, accounts for the remaining 1.589 billion cigarettes.

Inventories of cigarettes amounted to 2.573 billion units on April 1, 2009, up 24.2% on the year, or 179.9% of the average monthly production volume.

Sales of cigarettes amounted to 4.3 billion units, up 0.2% on the year, including 3.2 billion units by trading companies, up 5.1%.