New Delhi  - Tobacco will kill 6 million people annually by next year and cause an estimated 500 billion-dollar loss to the global economy, according to health conference in India Tuesday.

The 14th World Conference on Tobacco or Health in Mumbai revealed that China and India were the world's biggest tobacco users at 325 million and 241 million tobacco users respectively.

"Tobacco industry has shifted its marketing and sales efforts to countries that have less effective public health policies and fewer resources and by 2010, tobacco will kill 6 million people worldwide annually," Judith Mackay, special advisor at World Lung Foundation which prepared the document with American Cancer Society, the Zee TV news network reported.

The economic costs were a result of lost productivity, misused resources, ineffective taxation and premature death, the study claimed.

"Because 25 per cent of smokers die and many more become ill during their most productive years, income loss devastates families and communities," study author Hana Ross was quoted as saying.

The report said since 1960, global tobacco production had increased 300 per cent in low and middle-resource countries while declining more than 50 per cent in high-resource countries.

Public health advocates at the conference also said the tobacco industry in Southeast Asia was systematically obstructing the implementation of a global treaty on curbing smoking and tobacco use.

The alleged abuses of tobacco firms ranged from attempting to write tobacco control laws and blocking the passage of key legislations in the Philippines, Laos and Cambodia, and using so-called "corporate social responsibility" to circumvent laws and regulations in Thailand, Malaysia, Cambodia and the Philippines. (dpa)