South Africa removes tax on sanitary pads
From April next year, South Africans will begin to buy tax free sanitary pad, the country’s newly appointed Finance Minister, Tito Mboweni has said, even as he promised additional funds to ensure female students have access to the pads.
There have been growing calls for this amid complaints that girls – especially those in poor, rural communities – have been missing out on school because of the high cost of the pads.
In some provinces they are already free for all female students.
Mboweni announced that from next April the 15% tax on sanitary pads would be scrapped.
Bread flour and cake flour were also now going to be exempt from VAT, he said, explaining that he had asked people on social media for their tips ahead of the speech:
“I received 3,299 tweets in total. One of them is from Tintsi Ngwenya in Johannesburg, who said: ‘Sanitary pads should be tax free – after considerable debate and consultation, as of the 1 April 2019, government will zero-rate the following items: One, sanitary pads. Two, bread flour Three, cake flour,’” he said.
Meanwhile, Mr Mboweni, who has only been in his job for two weeks, said the country could not afford to continue borrowing at its current rate and must reduce its national debt, now expected to reach 60% of GDP in the next five years.
BBC
