- A discussion on period tax reforms
Period poverty is a major issue in Sri Lanka, to the point that many women and girls in the country don’t have access to sanitary napkins, simply because it’s not viewed as a necessity in certain areas, and also due to the lack of education surrounding menstruation. What better day to discuss this than today, on International Women’s Day?
Oxfam is launching a report and hosting a discussion on taxes on sanitary napkins and recommended reform on 15 March in hopes of changing the current issues surrounding access to menstruation products.
Brunch spoke to Oxfam Gender Co-ordinator Lakmini Jayathilake to learn more about period taxes and what can be done to eradicate them. In conversation with Jayathilake, she explained that in order to reform this, the Ministry of Finance should remove General Duty (15%), cess (15%), Ports and Airports Development Levy (PAL) (10%), and Value-Added Tax (VAT) (8%) components from the current taxation structure pertaining to menstrual hygiene products in Sri Lanka, bringing the total tax levied on these products down to zero. Another option would be removing tariffs on imported raw material used to produce sanitary napkins and other menstrual hygiene products. She also stated that the Ministry of Finance should declare the reduction in taxes through the means of an Extraordinary Gazette.
Let’s talk numbers
Sri Lanka has 5.4 million households and 5,355,092 reproductive women and girls between the ages of 15 and 49 years. Jayathilake explained that the age cohort chosen for this study was 15-47 years as global literature cites 12-13 as the common age of menarche and ages between 42-51 with a mean average of 47 as the age of menopause. In other words, the exorbitant tax on menstrual hygiene products leaves over five million menstruating women and girls with little to no access to menstrual products due to unaffordability and deprived of access to products that meet their specific biological and medical needs due to the lack of choice available in the market.
So does the Government make a significant revenue from taxing menstruating women and girls? The simple answer, Jayathilake explained, was not really. “According to Sri Lanka Customs data, the tax on sanitary napkins and tampons provided a revenue of approximately Rs. 120 million in 2019. This amounted to 0.005% of the total tax revenue that year, so the Government definitely can do without this discriminatory tax as it is a negligible proportion of the island’s total tax revenue.”
This leaves the question of who benefits from the tax. The new study explained that local producers of sanitary napkins are few in number. A single brand of imported sanitary napkins enters the local market due to high taxes at the border, and since border taxes make the only imported brand in the market expensive, these protective border taxes also discourage the entry of cheaper products into the market. This gives room for local producers to mark up their prices and to earn profits higher than usual. Jayathilake further elaborated that according to the study, protective border taxes also distort the market by removing competition to the local producers. “This eliminates all incentives for local producers to improve the quality of their products and to stay price competitive.”
In short, protective border taxes on menstrual hygiene products protect and benefit a smaller segment of society at the expense of the welfare of low income-earning menstruating women.
Benefits from removal of tax
Jayathilake stated that the benefits of removing taxes on menstrual hygiene products is shared amongst many socio-economic sectors of the country. For example, increasing absenteeism amongst menstruating female labour is a sentiment popularised by activists and the popular media. However, she added that there have been few studies done to establish the link between menstruation, lack of access to menstrual hygiene products, and the drop in work attendance during days of menstruation. “Based on existing surveys it can be argued that the removal of menstrual hygiene product taxes would allow women to work in comfort and potentially increase output, aiding productivity increase in the economy at large,” she commented, adding that for example, a survey conducted in the Netherlands that focused on age dependent productivity loss caused by menstruation-related symptoms, on 32,748 women aged between 15-45 years, found that presenteeism amongst women with menstruation-related illness accounts for an average of 8.9 days of productivity loss.
In terms of health impacts, Jayathilake shared that the literature indicates that the use of alternative menstrual hygiene products such as cloth rags make women vulnerable to diseases such as cervical cancer even though Sri Lanka has a low incidence of cervical cancer. Further, she explained that the extensive body of literature exploring the link between poor menstrual hygiene management (MHM) practices and the development of urogenital infections such as bacterial vaginosis, sets out that minimal or non-usage of menstrual hygiene products make women increasingly vulnerable to urogenital infections.
“Menstruation is an involuntary monthly biological process. Therefore, access to sufficient menstrual hygiene products that meet specific biological and medical needs is a basic human necessity,” she stated, adding that even though there is very little research on how unmet menstrual hygiene needs may impact the mental health of menstruating women and girls, existing surveys and polls can be largely used as grounds to establish that the lack of access to menstrual hygiene products during menstruation has an adverse impact on the emotional wellbeing of females.
If you wish to sign the petition for reforms on period taxes, please visit the link below:
Website: www.change.org/p/ministry-of-finance-sri-lanka-don-t-tax-my-period
