OREANDA-NEWS. Cigarette output in Belarus grew 6.2% on the year in January-August 2013 to 23.2 billion units, according to the National Statistics Committee (Belstat).

In August alone, Belarus' cigarette output totalled 3.2 billion pieces (up 10% on year, up 0.8% on month).

Cigarette inventories stood at 1.7 billion units as of September 1, 2013 (70.4% of the average monthly output), up 10.2% on the month.

As of August 1, 2013 tobacco inventories stood at 1.6 billion units, up 43.6% from the level of July 1, 2013.

Sales of cigarettes amounted to 16.7 billion units, down 5.8% on the year, including 11.5 billion units sold by retail companies, up 3%.

Belarusian-made cigarettes accounted for 96.1% of all sales in Jan-Aug 2013, up 0.1 percentage points on the year. The share of imported cigarettes in the total sales amounted to 3.9%, down 0.1 percentage points.