Yesterday, Tuesday, the Regie announced at its Headquarter in Hadath the winners of the “Manchar Souwar” tobacco competition about the stages of reaping tobacco and tunbac harvest in Lebanon. As the title indicates, it refers to the twine used to hung tobacco leafs after being reaped.
In this occasion, the Regie organized an exhibition for the competing photographs. The Regie had received 787 photographs submitted by 248, amateur as well as professional, participants, of different age ranges. Among this number, 492 were admitted, of which 47 made it to the finals.
During the ceremony, the Regie President, Mr. Nassif Seklaoui took the stage: “the Regie aims to launch purposeful initiatives after it had set a plan for sustainable development, under which it works toward developing different aspects of our community. It supports talents and intellectual as well as artistic potentials. It’s a Regie tradition to back local communities and thousands of families and to shed the light over the creativity of our youth. The Regie was never short when it comes to supporting the economy, reserve, and community in this country. It rewards distinction, and thus it was lately rewarded the ISO quality certification to become the first public facility achieving such goal.” Seklaoui stressed that “248 young men and women participated in this competition. Through their lens we saw the brightest sieneral Manager Eng. Nassif Seklaoui. Then Abboud gave a speech on behalf of Seklaoui, in which he asked "is what is proposed by COP8 will actually reduce the health bill in developing countries and reduce the number of smokers or it will contribute to reduce the incomes of these countries and keep the bill health high?"
He added: "Will the profits resulting from the smuggling will reach international organizations that tackle health problems or will it be used to finance the lower economies owned by terrorist organizations?" "Will the major countries sponsoring these agreements will commit themselves to them or will they make them a sword on the necks of the countries that do not go along with them?" He stressed the need to "draft a unified Lebanese position that takes into account the views of all concerned partners in the sector in order to protect Lebanon's interests."
The Regie’s Head of General Management Department Mrs. Mariam Hariri displayed a presentation explaining the position of the Administration of the COP7 decisions and the COP8 proposals. She enumerated the effects of the decisions of the Conference of the Parties, including "the impact on tax revenues and the sector’s lower income that is an essential component of the government’s revenues, damaging the economic cycle and the workforce involved in the cultivation, manufacture, and trade of tobacco, disregarding the demographic and economic nature and the specificity of each States (…), and the increase of smuggling resulting from unstudied decisions."
According to Mrs. Hariri, the Regie seeks “to strengthen the tobacco sector as a legitimate national industry, agriculture, and trade generating a major state income", "to sustain this sector and to support the national economy". "What bring us together today are common concern and common issue: protecting and reinforcing national economy against challenges facing it". "We cannot look at tobacco sector only from the perspective of health damage; we must rather look at it with a comprehensive and impartial view. We must take into consideration the economic benefits it offers and the specificity of Lebanon." She called for "raising the level of coordination and information exchange between public administrations to protect the future of the sector and raising awareness of the risks of the provisions of this agreement and the impact ratifying it".