E-Malt.com News article: Ghana: Government rejects call to freeze revised excise duty rates on beer

The government has rejected Accra Brewery Limited’s call to freeze revised excise duty rates on beer, saying the company has not provided evidence for its warning of 2,000 job losses, News Ghana reported on August 31.

ABL had asked the government to leave the existing sliding-scale beer excise rates unchanged for the 2026 and 2027 fiscal years, arguing the pause would allow time for an evidence-based review of how the revised regime might affect local manufacturing, investment, competitiveness against imports and jobs across the beer value chain. The brewery estimated the change could cost its own budget $7.5 million based on implementation assumptions for FY27, and said the wider beer sector supported 52,000 jobs in 2023, about 0.4 percent of total employment, with roughly 98 percent of those jobs sitting outside the breweries themselves.

Under the previous regime, beer and stout made with more than 70 percent local raw materials qualified for a 10 percent excise rate under a three-band sliding scale meant to reward local content. The revised Excise Act keeps the three-band structure but raises the top band’s rate to 25 percent, alongside increases in the middle band.

In a rejoinder issued Monday, the Ministry of Finance said the central question was whether the original concession was still doing its job. It cited Ghana Revenue Authority data showing that about 85 percent of qualifying production by ABL and other local manufacturers already sits in the highest concessionary band. “There is no further band to move to and no marginal inducement left to offer,” the ministry said, adding that the sliding scale has not been abolished and that a preferential margin of 22.5 percentage points below the standard rate remains available to producers in the top band. The ministry said the review was prompted by evidence that the concession was being claimed at a scale not supported by the underlying local agricultural production.

The dispute follows earlier warnings from ABL that it was weighing a halt to operations over the revised bill, and comes as the two sides remain at odds over its economic impact.


02 September, 2026