5% “plastic tax” replaced by 1% fee on all imports

It may have taken a while, but government has finally realised that its five percent “plastic tax” was not fair or viable and has replaced it with a one percent across the board levy on imports. Proceeds from the new environmental tax will go into a special fund that will be used to implement a national solid waste management plan as well as strengthen the Department of the Environment. The one percent tax was part of the original recommendation for the waste management project but was abandoned in favour of the narrow five percent surcharge on goods packaged in plastic. That system proved difficult for the Customs Department to interpret, raised little in the way of revenue and had no impact on cleaning up the environment. While under the new law medicines and basic food items will be exempt from the tax, the price of most other goods, ranging from cement to automobiles, will go up slightly.