Finance Minister، Abdhulla Jihad stated that Government would increase tax for tobacco based products imported to Maldives by 300 percent.
Speaking at the Parliamentary Budget Committee، he mentioned that duty charges for tobacco products، oil، vehicles، cosmetics، rice، wheat and cereal to be increased in order to collect more revenue for the Government.
Finance Minister stated that، planning is in order to increase duty from 150 percent to 300 percent for tobacco products. While duty percent taken off cars would see an increase from 100 percent to 150 percent، perfumes for which duty is not currently taken are to be charged 10 percent as duty fee.
In addition to this he also highlighted the decision to increase duty is based on luxury items and environmentally unfriendly products.
According to the 2015 Budget plans، recurrent expenses land at an estimation of MVR 15.8 billion.
The 2015 Budget plans also estimates a cumulative income plus free funding to be approximately MVR 21.5 billion، this includes MVR 13 billion collected as tax revenue and miscellaneous income of MVR 6.8 billion plus free funding of approximate MVR 1.7 billion. Apart from this income based projects to be somewhere around MVR 3.4 billion.