From January 1, 2019, all cigarettes sold in the UAE will need to be digitally tracked, from the point of production to the point of sale, to ensure full compliance with local tax laws.
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00:00Good afternoon and welcome to the Gulf News Business Wrap. My name's Ed Klaus and today
00:05is Wednesday the 28th of November. Our top story today, the FTA has announced its new
00:11electronic tracking system for tobacco products. Yesterday Sheikh Hamdan bin Rashid, the chairman
00:17of the Federal Tax Authority, said that from January 1, 2019, all tobacco products would
00:23need to be electronically marked to avoid tax evasion. The FTA says that whilst tax
00:30compliance has been pretty good with the excise tax on tobacco products, they needed to ensure
00:36100% compliance and would be doing so by making sure that from the point of production to
00:41the point of sale, tobacco could be tracked at every step of the way. The final resolution
00:48will come into effect August 1, 2019, after which every tobacco product brought into the
00:53country will need to be marked. Failure to comply with this new regulation could see
00:58businesses shut down until they've achieved compliance. The FTA said it will force businesses
01:04to stop selling if their products aren't electronically marked. Elsewhere, data retrieved from the
01:08black box of the Lion Air jet that went down in the Java Sea at the end of October has
01:13revealed what many investigators thought to be the cause of the crash, faulty machinery
01:18based on inaccurate sensor readings. The pilots of the plane were fighting constant
01:24nosedives as they took off after sensors on the body of the plane instructed the automated
01:31systems to push the plane downwards. After about 24 attempts to regain the plane's altitude,
01:38it finally crashed into the Java Sea, killing 189 people on board. And lastly, the UK's
01:45Chancellor of the Exchequer, Philip Hammond, has warned that any type of Brexit deal that
01:50sees the UK leaving the European Union will result in economic harm to Britain. He said
01:56that a deal exit would result in potentially as much as 3% damage to the UK economy over
02:0315 years, and no deal Brexit, meaning that there's no kind of trade agreement agreed
02:08between the two, could see damage of up to 9% to the UK economy over the next 15 years.
02:15That's all for today. Thanks very much for joining us and we'll be back tomorrow with
02:18more headlines.