Japan's tobacco industry still smoking, despite bad quarter
Has the anti-smoke crusade finally reached Japan?
Pedestrians in front of an electric market information display in Tokyo, on Feb. 12.
AP/Katsumi Kasahara
Hardly, since more than half of all Japanese men still smoke, as do 15 percent of women.
But Japan Tobacco Co., the worldÕs third largest, reported net profits were down by 30 percent in the last quarter of last year after its purchase of UK tobacco maker Gallaher Group PLC.
Japan itself, with its 30 million smokers, remains AsiaÕs largest tobacco market with about a quarter of all Japanese smoking every day.
Until 1985, tobacco was a government monopoly in Japan and it still owns a little more than 50 percent of the stock in the ÒprivatizedÓ company.
Known as JT, the company made a net profit of 61.9 billion Yen [$673 million] during the quarter ended Dec. 31, compared with a net profit of 87.9 billion Yen a year earlier.
But Hiroshi Kimura, president and chief executive, predicted: "even in the midst of this recession and the foreign-exchange fluctuations, our international tobacco business continues to be a growth engine of the JT Group.Ó
