The increase of the tobacco excise duty was necessary for the harmonization of a European Directive, otherwise Romania risks triggering an infringement procedure, the Minister of Public Finance, Eugen Teodorovici, told a press conference on Tuesday adding that "he has no gift to levy taxes and duties."
According to him, the notification came from the European Commissioner for Economic and Financial Affairs, Taxation and Customs, Pierre Moscovici.
The level of the total excise duty for cigarettes will be increased, starting with September 1, 2019, from 483.74 lei/1,000 cigarettes to 503.97 lei/1,000 cigarettes, according to the draft Ordinance for the regulation of fiscal-budgetary measures, published by the Ministry of Finance on Tuesday.
Moreover, for soft drinks the sugar content of which is between 5-8 g sugar/100 ml, the excise duty will be 0.8 lei/liter, and for those whose sugar content exceeds 8 g sugar/100 ml the excise duty is one leu (Romanian currency, ed.n.) per liter and will be payable by producers, importers or those who will purchase intra-Community, according to the same draft Ordinance.
The excise of soft drinks with high sugar content will bring additional revenues to the budget of 320 million lei (rd EUR 67 million) this year, the MFP maintains.
For its part, the National Soft Drinks Association (ANBR) stated, in a press release sent to AGERPRES last week, that the Government's intention to introduce an additional duty for sugary soft drinks is a discriminatory and disproportionate measure because soft drinks represent, on average, only 3 percent of the daily caloric intake of an adult, and its sole purpose seems to be to boost the revenues to the state budget.