Government has officially enacted a major fiscal measure from the 2025/2026 National Budget, with the removal of Value Added Tax on 16 categories of commonly used food items.
00:00Government has officially enacted a major fiscal measure from the 2026 National Budget with the removal of value-added tax on 16 categories of commonly used food items.
00:13Effective today, the new items have been added to the list of zero-rated goods, meaning the 12.5% VAT will no longer be applied at the point of sale.
00:23Among the items now free of VAT are kitchen staples, local condiments and popular beverages.
00:31The zero rating applies to goods including table salt, cocoa powder, morbi, icing sugar, vanilla essence, soy sauce and prepared mustard.
00:41A clarification issued by the Finance Ministry confirmed a substantial change for the local agriculture sector.
00:49While zero-rated food items were historically required to be unprocessed to maintain their VAT-free status, a definition that excluded most value-added processing, this restriction has now been removed for specified local produce.
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