Passage of Excise Duty Amendment Bill to promote good health – says Ghana NCD Alliance
Labram Musah, National Coordinator for the Ghana Non-Communicable Disease Alliance (GhNCDA), has said the passage of the Excise Duty Amendment Bill will contribute to the promotion of healthy living in the country.
Health financing according to the World Health Organization (WHO) is a core function of health systems that can enable progress towards Universal Health Coverage (UHC) hence improving effective service coverage and financial protection. However, millions of people today cannot access quality services due to the high cost of medical care.
The consumption of unhealthy products such as tobacco, alcohol, and sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs) remain the leading risk factor for the development of chronic health conditions yet prices of these health harming products are unbelievably low, increasing their accessibility and affordability. Despite these facts, one of the lifesaving recommendations by WHO and the ECOWAS Directive urging governments to implement effective tax measures on these products are yet to be materialized.
In February this year, a number of civil society organisations (CSOs) which included the Gh NCD Alliance called on Parliament to expedite action on the passage of the Excise Duty Amendment Bill to avert tobacco, alcohol and sugar related diseases and death.
Speaking at a press conference on the theme Public Health Benefits of the Excise Duty Amendment Bill, 2022, Labram Musah commended the government and other stakeholders who played a role in the passage of the Excise Duty Amendment Bill 2022 as they heeded to their petition of saving lives through the taxation of products that are harmful to the ordinary human.
“The coalition would like to commend the government through the Ministry of Finance and its agencies for heeding to the project and introducing the Excise Duty Amendment Bill on sugar sweetened beverages,” he remarked.
He further went on to give emphatic reasons why the GhNCDA took a stand to help save the health and lives of ordinary Ghanaians who are ignorant about the dire consequences of the intake of sugar sweetened beverages.
Contrary to reports out there that the Excise Duty Amendment Bill if assented to by the President, will collapse a lot of businesses and render many unemployed, the GhNCDA is of the view that more value should be placed on the health of the Ghanaian people rather than a few people making selfish gains and tagged the process as a win-win for all.
“The NHIS might collapse due to the high expenditure allocated to the treatment of non communicable diseases like diabetes, hypertension, obesity and other cardiovascular diseases which emanates from the intake of sugar sweetened beverages.”
“The expectation is that, an increase in taxes on unhealthy products will offer a win-win situation thus raking in alternative domestic revenue to finance specially the National Health Insurance Scheme; which undoubtedly will go a long way to help in the attainment of Ghana’s UHC by 2030 and offer financial protection for people living with NCDs especially,” he quipped
The coalition urged the President to assent to the bill as early as possible amidst the resistance from producers of the various beverages to safeguard the lives of Ghanaians as he promised to do so.
“We are urging government to adopt a sugar based content limiting tax in the near future. And the revenue should be earmarked in order to support a lot of research ongoing at the moment,” he added.
The objective of the Excise Duty (Amendment) Bill, 2022 is to amend the Excise Duty Act, 2014 (Act 878) to revise the excise tax rates for cigarettes and other tobacco products to conform with the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) Protocols and raise revenue to mitigate the harmful effects of these excisable products.
It is also intended to increase the excise duty in respect of wine, malt drinks, and spirits; and impose excise duty on sweetened beverages and electronic cigarettes, and electronic liquids to increase revenue.
The Excise Duty Amendment Bill, 2022 was among the three amended tax revenue bills recently passed by the Parliament that have generated conversations of high tax incidence on businesses in the country with fears of the new taxes leading to the collapse of industries.
Government, with the passage of the three amended tax revenue bills, is expected to raise some additional GHS 4bn in domestic revenue.
