The move to further amend the Smoking and Tobacco Products Usage (Control) Act of 2005 (Amended in 2013) has drawn mixed reactions.
Stakeholders believe that the adoption of the proposed amendments by Parliament would hit the largest tax revenue-paying industry hard.
The tobacco industry pays around Tk30,000 crore in value added tax (VAT) annually to the national exchequer.
Though the proposed amendments of the Act aim at reducing tobacco consumption, many including economists and businesses feel otherwise.
The thousands of street vendors, who sell cigarettes across the country, cannot be brought under enforcement and they will carry on their operation.
Since these vendors will not get the supply of top brands produced by the multinational tobacco companies they will sell low-quality brands of the local companies that are least interested in complying with rules and regulations.
In the last fiscal year, the sector contributed Tk27,800 crore in VAT and this is 53.7% of the total VAT revenue mobilized by the NBR.
A spokesperson of a leading tobacco company said: "Section 6 of the proposed amendment refers to mandatory retail licensing for tobacco products. This may seem progressive to some but in reality, implementing such a licensing system will be a difficult task. Most retailers numbering about 1.5 million people, selling these products are owners of marginal businesses with very little amount of capital. More often than not, these are unstructured outlets with no holding numbers for their establishment".
Recently, speakers at a meeting organized by the National Association of Small and Cottage Industries of Bangladesh (NASCIB) expressed their opposition to the provision of the Tobacco Control Act amendment that would require small and marginal dealers to obtain licenses in order to conduct business.
If this amendment is enacted, approximately 1.5 million marginal and low-income shopkeepers in the country will face terrible hardships, they said at the meeting.
The number of dependents on the shopkeepers is between 7 and 8 million.
There is also opposition to the provision of barring the tobacco companies from CSR activities, mentioned in the amendment.