Excise duties on sweetened juices, spirits and tobacco products expected to reduce Ghana’s health bill
The Ghana Revenue Authority has said that the introduction of the excise duties to cover sweetened juices, wines and liquors, e-cigarettes among others falls within government’s overall objective to reduce the health bill.
Basically, the government through the GRA has imposed additional excise duties on these products and made amendments to the charging method on certain products like cigarettes and tobacco products in accordance with ECOWAS recommendations all geared towards reducing the consumption of these products.
Speaking with Kennedy Mornah on the Eye on Port TV program, the Head of the Excise Unit at GRA, Kwabena Anto Apau, said while this may translate into reduced imports of such products, government is convinced this is a move in the right direction so far protecting the wellbeing of citizens.
“Previously we had excise duties to cover only carbonated soft drinks but now we have extended the scope to cover all sweetened soft drinks. We have noticed that the other soft drinks are harmful and the intake of them cause diabetes, hypertension and other non-communicable diseases on the rise. It is tax, and definitely it will bring in revenue but the focus is to try to introduce fiscal measures to discourage purchase.”
He said the ECOWAS directive on the harmonisation of the exercise duty of the Tobacco products direct that excise duty on Tobacco product must include ad valorem and specific duty rate. The ad valorem rate is required to be 50% or more on the value while the specific tax rate is required to be a minimum equivalent of two cents per stick in the case of cigarettes, cigar, cigarillo and the cedi equivalent of $20 per net kilo for all other tobacco products.
“For fruit juices we have introduced excise duty rates of 20% and the other sweetened beverages the excise duty is also 20% but certain products have not been touched for example bottle water. The excise duty was 17.5% and it remains the same. Also we had an anomaly where excise duty rates for beer was higher than spirits so we had to correct that. So now excise duty on spirits is 50% from the previous 25%.”
The GRA says this policy is necessary to make these products expensive to deter the unregulated consumption of them in the society.
