SL Budget by 2020 sans liquor or alcohol tax revenue
While alcohol and tobacco constitute an essential component of Sri Lanka’s tax revenue, the Government was working on a strategy by 2020 where tax revenue will be sans these two components which are crippling society.
These comments were made by President Maithripala Sirisena when he launched a 5-five year plan to rid the country from the drug menace (Mathin Thora Ratak) at a meeting in Ja-Ela on Thursday. He said the National Anti-Drug Campaign would continue over the next five years.
He said that to mark the launch liquor shops in the entire country had been asked to close on July 10 (last Friday). When the Committee on Drug Prevention suggested to close down the liquor shops for three consecutive days, officials in the Treasury who formulate the budget were upset over losing revenue from liquor shops for three days, the President quipped.
Thus, he conceded that the revenue accrued from these items would be a major constraint in eradicating the drug menace in the country.
Though everyone thinks of the huge revenue that comes from these items, expenditure incurred on state hospital care and medication as a result of illnesses and disease through smoking and liquor consumption is much more (than revenue earned), President Sirisena pointed out.
Consuming drugs, liquor and tobacco increases poverty and the nation becoming prone to deadly diseases makes it an economic constraint, he said, adding that diseases are also increasing in the world at the same speed of the development of new technology. President Sirisena revealed that they have got reliable information that some officials of two Government institutions have been involved for a long time in the illegal drug trade in this country.