OREANDA-NEWS. On 30 June 2009 was announced, that cigarette output in Belarus decreased 12.6% on the year in January-May to 7.443 billion units, according to the National Statistics Committee.

Grodno-based state-run Neman produced 4.8 billion cigarettes, down 12.9% on the year. Privately-owned Tabak-Invest, based in Minsk, accounts for the remaining 2.643 billion cigarettes.

Sales of cigarettes amounted to 7.9 billion units, up 2.4% on the year, including 5.6 billion units by trading companies, up 6.4%.

Belarusian-made cigarettes accounted for 92.2% of all sales, up 2.5 percentage points on the year.