February is always an interesting month for REEP, because the Minister of Finance presents and publishes the annual Budget Review. Among many other announcements, the Minister announces the excise tax increases on tobacco and alcohol products. Furthermore, the Budget Review allows us to calculate the size of the legal cigarette and alcohol markets. Unfortunately, the February 2023 budget was disappointing. The Minister increased the excise tax on tobacco and alcohol products by a mere 4.9%, in line with the Treasury’s predicted inflation rate for the 2023/24 fiscal year. That means that the excise tax, for the second year in a row, is likely to decrease in inflation-adjusted terms, because the actual inflation rate is typically higher than the inflation rate that the National Treasury uses in its budgeting process.

In this newsletter we report on three in-country missions that were conducted under the banner of the Knowledge Hub: in Panama, Mongolia and Tanzania. Our partners at the Development Gateway recently launched a dashboard supporting tobacco control efforts in Ethiopia.

We are pleased to announce that we received a grant from Vital Strategies and partners to investigate the excise tax structure on alcohol products in South Africa. We also report on a study, conducted largely by Sam Filby, on the likely economic and public health impact of a shortening the trading times of retailers selling alcohol for onsite consumption in the Western Cape. Trading time restrictions are being considered by the Western Cape Government as a mechanism to reduce alcohol-related harms in the province.

Read in full online here or download a PDF version.