The Advocata Institute will initially provide weekly updated figures through its website’s “Food Tax Tracker” in a bid to highlight tax policy’s impact on household costs.
According to recent figures released by crowdsourced database Numbeo, grocery prices are 35% higher in Sri Lanka than in neighbouring India.
“The government intervenes heavily in the trade regime for food items through para-tariffs [meaning] the public is unaware of the extent to which food is taxed,” Advocata said in a statement.
“So we have compiled a table showing the tax on basic food stuffs, items that would be on table of many families.”
The think tank claims that import taxes currently add LKR130 (US$0.85) to a bottle of cooking oil, LKR880 (US$5.75) to a kilo of butter, LKR625 (US$4.08) to a kilo of yogurt and around 141% to a kilo of cheese.
Due to the time it takes to gather accurate data on food taxes the initial exercise will be limited to a few basic food items, though Advocata hopes to expand this scope to eventually include all major food items.
“According to available data only 4.3% of government revenue is raised through the special commodity levy imposed on food items, which ironically is almost exactly equivalent to the losses incurred by the major state enterprises,” it said.
The tracker will be used as a part of campaign by Advocata to put pressure on the government to remove tariffs such as its Special Commodity Levy, and return to a regime of low and uniform duties for all products.