The Federal Government has now introduced an excise duty of N10 per litre on all non-alcoholic, carbonated and sweetened beverages ,Excise duty is a type of tax imposed on production, licensing and sale of all goods.
The Minister of Finance, Budget and National Planning, Zainab Ahmed, said this during the public presentation of the 2022 budget on Wednesday in Abuja.
According to her, the new policy introduced is in the Finance Act signed into law by The President on December 31, 2021.
However, the Manufacturers Association of Nigeria warned that new tax imposed on carbonated drinks would be futile. MAN authorized a report detailing the effects of reintroducing excise duty on carbonated drinks and warned that it would be counterproductive and lead to revenue loss for the government.
The report, titled ‘key considerations against excise on non-alcoholic beverages’, reveals that the government might collect N81bn revenue from excise duty on carbonated drinks between 2022 and 2025, but lose N197bn within the same period from other taxes, such as Value Added Tax and Company Income Tax from the manufacturers of soft drinks.
The report stated that the excise duty would cause the beverage sub-sector of the food and beverage industry to lose up to N1.9tn in sales revenue between 2022 -2025, due to the foisting of the new taxes with various adverse effects on jobs and supply chain businesses.
