The Federal Government (FG) has begun the implementation of excise duty of N10/liter on all non-alcoholic, carbonated, and sweetened beverages. This was disclosed on Thursday by the Chief Superintendent of Customs, Department of Excise, Free Trade Zone, and Industrial Incentives, Dennis Ituma at a policy meeting.
The policy meeting was organized by the National Action on Sugar Reduction (NASR) to proffer solutions to implement taxes and other interventions aimed at reducing the consumption of sweetened beverages in Nigeria.
He said, “The N10 per liter Sugar-Sweetened Beverages (SSBs) has been implemented on June 1, by July 21, all excise duties must have been collected and paid into the federation account. It should interest you that taxation on SSBs was a policy of the Federal Government in 1984 but was stopped in January 2009.
“Previously both SSBs, alcoholic drinks, and tobacco were all taxed until 2009 when SSBs were removed from taxable beverages. Only alcoholic drinks and tobacco generates N414 billion, SSBs will further increase the revenue generated from drinks”.
He also said to ensure compliance; the agency had resident customs officers deployed to all factories producing SSBs to take measurements of all daily production.
In January, the Federal Government had announced the introduction of the excise duty, adding that the proceeds would be utilized to combat Non-Communicable Diseases (NCD).
