Egypt: Food and beverage are exempted from value-added tax

Food and beverage are exempted from Egypt’s planned value-added tax, according to a statement released by the Ministry of Finance’s official Facebook page citing Minister Hany Qadry.

The tax is part of the government’s fiscal reform programme, which includes cuts to expensive energy subsidies and the introduction of other new tax measures, and aims to containing the country’s budget deficit, which is estimated to have reached 10.8 percent of GDP in the last fiscal year.

Last September, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi in an editorial for the Wall Street Journal entitled “Re-engineering Egypt’s Economy” that his country Egypt would introduce a value-added tax, as the ‘main reform’ on the agenda concerns the proposed amendments to the General Sales Tax.

“The planned reform will move Egypt toward a value-added tax regime that will — alongside a simplified tax regime for small and medium-size enterprises — raise revenues and bolster investment incentives by boosting growth, creating jobs and improving firms’ cash flow,” said the president.