FINANCE Minister Mthuli Ncube was last Thursday quizzed in
the Senate over the issue of the removal of duty on sanitary wear for women and
girls.
A packet of panty liners now costs between $3 and $7,
depending on the manufacturer, which is beyond the reach of many poor urban and
rural women.
Worried by the soaring costs of sanitary wear, Bulawayo
Metropolitan senator Gideon Shoko (MDC Alliance) asked Ncube to explain why
government was failing to ensure pads were imported duty-free.
“The Finance minister said sanitary wear will be duty-free,
but what is happening in the country right now is that instead sanitary wear is
very expensive and is not affordable to the women folk,” Shoko, who is a member
of the HIV/Aids Parliamentary Thematic Committee, said.
In his 2019 budget statement, Ncube said he had considered
the plight of women and girls to suspend duty on sanitary pads, as well as on
raw materials used to manufacture sanitary wear.
His pronunciations were then followed by an amendment to
Statutory Instrument 257 of 2003, wherein there was insertion of section 9GG
after section 9FF of the regulations to effectively suspend duty on sanitary
wear.
“A suspension of duty shall, for a period of 12 months
(from 1st December 2018 to the 30th November 2019), be granted on sanitary
(wear),” the regulations read.
But Ncube’s response in the Senate was that the prices of
sanitary wear have been going up in the same manner as prices of other basic
commodities.
“The relief that I gave was that sanitary wear must be
duty-free. I suspect that you are speaking of the general price increases of
goods that have also impacted on the prices of sanitary wear,” Ncube said.
“We are determined to ensure that there is growth of money
supply and this has been shown by that inflation has dropped to 1, 7% in
February from 17% in October last year. We want to improve competition and
remove duty for manufacturing of sanitary wear, and going forward we will look
into that,” Ncube said. Newsday
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