OREANDA-NEWS. Belarus’ Grodno-based Neman tobacco factory increased cigarette output 5.6% on the year in January-April 2013 to 8.04 billion units, a Neman administration representative told reporters.

Production under contracts with British-American Tobacco Trading Company reached 1.39 billion units, down 32.2%.

Production under contracts with Japan Tobacco International amounted to 0.131 billion units, down 30.9%.

Neman did not manufacture cigarettes for Tobacco International Enterprises Ltd in January-April 2013.

For the home market the company produced 7.07 billion units, down 12.2%.

Cigarette exports totalled 885.2 billion units (up 6.8 times) to the tune of USD 8.1 million (up 6.7 times).

The company exports cigarettes to Lithuania, Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia, Kyrgyzstan and the Middle East.

The tobacco company paid Br636.1 billion (USD 73.283 million) in taxes to the state budget of Belarus in January-March 2013.

Neman was founded in 1861 and transformed into a joint-stock company with all shares controlled by the state in December 2007. Neman had its cigarette production quota for 2012 raised to 25.5 billion units.

Production quotas apply solely to cigarettes produced for Belarus’ home market, while tobacco goods manufactured under export contracts are not subject to any regulations and are not included into the overall quota.