Government to impose new taxation on tobacco, alcohol

Government will resort to diversifying the sources of financing the different social funds, without the approval of any new tax deductions on employees’ wages, as it will adopt a new type of tax and direct charges on tobacco and alcohol, and other products as well, to maintain the balance of social funds, to ensure the continuation of ‭services ‭ ‬that are ‭provided by ‭these funds ‭for insurances ‭of 23 million Algerians‭. ‬

Within this context, the Minister of Labour, Employment and Social Security, Tayeb Louh, assured over 2 million employees, regarding the perception of government to diversify the social security funds, asserting in an exclusive statement to Echorouk, on the sidelines of a visit of the Prime Minister, Abdelmalek Sellal to Ouargla, that the government will not resort to additional deductions from the wages of employees and users, because they preferred to resort to the development of other resources, and new duties on alcohol and tobacco, to be transferred directly to the social funds, in a move to ease such burdens on the labor sector.

Tayeb Louh told Echorouk; “Reform of the social security system, based on three basic objectives, the first is the modernization, reform the of financing fund system to maintain equilibrium, and focus on the balance of these funds with contributions, by relying on new resources far from the sector of work, which counts subscriptions of nearly two million employee, and 6.5 million followers economic sector and free activitiese.

“The social security system in Algeria is one of the best systems in the world, and its level resembles that of France and Germany. The system will move, in the prospects of 2014, to accompany the human resources, in order to ensure the prospective studies”, he added.