Sales of Societatea Nationala Tutunul Romanesc (National Tobacco Company -SNTR) fell some 20% due to excises increasing in the first part of the year, Aleodor Paunescu, SNTR manager's advisor, maintained.
"Our cigarette supply includes products at lower prices than those of the competition, so that we were hoping some of those using our competitors' products would turn to SNTR's products instead, but we still don't know if it actually happened," he explained.
All things considered, the company estimates this year's turnover to reach over $177 million, up $20 million since last year, collected from the sale of 15,000 tonnes of cigarettes.
Paunescu also said that so far, the company had been paying its debts rescheduled by the state budget in February in due time.
The company resumed operations that month, after having gone into technical unemployment early in January, 2001, due to the 2,300bn lei in unpaid debts to the state budget.
SNTR makes three brands of non-filter cigarettes and twenty brands of filter cigarettes, which account for 70% and 30% respectively of the sales.
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