Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo has an­nounced steep in­creas­es in Cus­toms Du­ties on al­co­hol and to­bac­co prod­ucts, which he said will ac­count for 80 per cent of pro­ject­ed rev­enue growth in the com­ing fis­cal year.

Un­der the new rates, du­ties on rum and spir­its will rise from $79.25 to $158.50 per cent of al­co­hol con­tent; beer from $5.14 to $10.28 by grav­i­ty; and cig­a­rettes from $5.26 to $10.52 per pack of 20.

These in­creas­es take im­me­di­ate ef­fect.

Ad­di­tion­al fee ad­just­ments, in­clud­ing the dou­bling of Con­tain­er Pro­cess­ing Fees from $525 to $1,050 and Cus­toms De­c­la­ra­tion fees from $40 to $80, will come in­to force on Jan­u­ary 1, 2026.

To­geth­er, these mea­sures are ex­pect­ed to gen­er­ate an ex­tra $1 bil­lion in rev­enue.

Tan­coo al­so moved to curb abuse of con­ces­sions for elec­tric ve­hi­cles, re­veal­ing that high-end mod­els have been im­port­ed tax-free.

From Jan­u­ary 1, 2026, lux­u­ry EVs val­ued over $400,000 will at­tract 10 per cent du­ty, 12.5 per cent VAT, and a tiered Mo­tor Ve­hi­cle Tax based on mo­tor size. The mea­sure should yield $40 mil­lion an­nu­al­ly.

To sup­port en­vi­ron­men­tal pro­tec­tion, a new 5 per cent tax will be ap­plied on sin­gle-use plas­tics at the point of im­por­ta­tion. Pro­ceeds will fund na­tion­al re­cy­cling and waste man­age­ment pro­grammes from Jan­u­ary 2026.