Colombo: On Sunday The Sri Lankan government has reduced the tax on women’s sanitary products. To help women and girls who cannot afford to buy due to the country’s economic crisis.
Even before the recession last year. Many female students and women in Sri Lanka Like other poor countries They stay at home on their menstrual periods because they don’t have money to buy sanitary ware.
This year’s study by policy advocacy group Advocata said “period poverty” – the inability to buy hygiene products – among Sri Lanka’s 5.3 million women of childbearing age is about 50 percent.
Campaigners believe the situation has worsened as Sri Lanka experiences a shortage of essential goods and severe inflation in excess of 70 percent.
President Ranil Wickremesinghe’s office said on Sunday that tariffs, airport taxes and other local taxes are not available. For raw materials imported to produce feminine hygiene products. exempted with immediate effect.
Wickremesinghe’s office It said in a statement that imported tampons and tampons would be 20 percent cheaper due to lower import duties.
The tax cuts are “making hygiene products cheaper. in terms of sanitation among women and girls in schools,” the statement said.
Months of protests over economic hardship led to President Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s resignation in July.
The country defaulted on $51 billion in foreign debt in April. and is in talks with the International Monetary Fund to secure $2.9 billion in aid.
The new government of Wickremesinghe began enforcing a new 2.5 percent VAT on all goods and services to boost state revenues.
However, the government has reduced the price of oil slightly in line with world market prices. But the price of diesel fuel, which is commonly used in public transport, remains unchanged.
