Sicpa scheme lacks tracking requirements -WHO

MANILA, Philippines - An international convention attached to the World Health Organization (WHO) has revealed that the multi-billion peso tax stamp scheme being pushed by SICPA Product Security SA is not a track and trace system.

According to the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC), SICPA’s costly scheme “lacks international tracking requirements” and “only covers the aspects of authentication and volume control.”

Simply put, SICPA’s expensive system cannot follow the trail of a cigarette after it has left the factories. This defeats SICPA’s statement that it can prevent the proliferation of smuggled goods and illicit trade of tobacco products. “The system cannot track and trace the product throughout the several stages of the supply chain,” the WHO FCTC stressed.

The WHO FCTC observed that in countries where SICPA’s system is implemented such as Brazil and Turkey, the tax stamp systems there do not track the supply chain system. Thus, “cross-border illicit trade is not addressed,” it said.

It also noted that SICPA’s secure markings are not “comprehensible by people from a range of linguistic backgrounds.” For instance, a security stamp printed in Asia would make no sense when shipped to, say, the Middle East.

This is “apart from the fact that SICPA coding is not in line with international coding/serialization standards” being put forward by globally recognized standaThe security codes are also not human readable but printed invisibly, the world body said. As a result, only officials with costly hand-held devices are allowed to check the codes and not the retailers and consumers.

Besides these, WHO FCTS also noted that SICPA’s system is very expensive.

“The SIPCA system costs up to $1,800 per million cigarettes and this in mostly developing countries. Such pricing is unaffordable for small and medium sized enterprises,” it said.

“The resource limitations of developing countries need to be respected,” it added.

The SICPA system being sold in the Philippines costs about $394 million — an amount which is deemed by the House of Representatives as “unreasonable.”

The House committee on ways and means said in a report that it is “deeply concerned with the substantial costs that will be passed on to the consumers as a result of the adoption of the SICPATRACE technology.”

The WHO FCTC is a treaty developed in response to the globalization of the tobacco epidemic through global marketing, transnational tobacco advertising, promotion and sponsorship, and the international movement of contraband and counterfeit cigarettes.

According to its expert group, “an international tracking and tracing regime would help prevent, detect and eliminate the illicit trade of genuine tobacco products, making it more difficult for smugglers.”