Pakistan’s authorities is about to abolish gross sales tax on sanitary products, in a sweeping new measure that reproductive justice advocates say may de-stigmatize ubiquitous social taboos round sexual well being.
The deliberate withdrawal of the 18% gross sales tax on sanitary objects and contraceptives, introduced as a part of the nation’s fiscal price range final week, comes after a marketing campaign for improved entry to business period merchandise in a nation the place solely a tiny proportion of lady at the moment use them.
Such objects are “indispensable for women’s health, dignity and full participation in social activities,” stated Muhammad Aurangzeb, the finance minister, on Friday.
Aurangzeb stated the federal government would additionally abolish tax on contraceptives, citing the nation’s “alarming” inhabitants progress. “Pakistan is the fifth-largest country in the world in terms of population,” he added. “Family planning is a top priority of the government.”
Lawyers Ahsan Jehangir Khan, 29, and Mahnoor Omer, 25, are broadly credited with sparking the nationwide discourse in Pakistan after they took the federal government to courtroom in a landmark legal case urging lawmakers to take away the so-called “period tax” and categorize menstrual merchandise as important items as a substitute of luxurious objects.
According to the United Nations’ youngsters’s company UNICEF, it’s estimated that simply 12% of girls and ladies in Pakistan use business sanitary merchandise. Most others resort to material and different home made options, advocates say.
Cost is taken into account an element within the low uptake, with domestically made merchandise at the moment incurring the 18% gross sales tax, and an extra 25% customs tax being added on imported merchandise, in accordance to Khan and Omer’s legal petition submitted in October.
When coupled with different native taxes, girls in Pakistan face a complete 40% surcharge on period merchandise, in accordance to UNICEF, pricing out essentially the most susceptible.
While welcoming the gross sales tax proposal, Omer, the petitioner within the legal case, and Khan, who’s representing her, are urgent for the whole eradication of your entire taxation regime surrounding menstrual objects, together with further levies on uncooked supplies used to make sanitary pads.
They say that, by making use of tax, the Pakistani authorities has systematically uncared for girls’s and ladies’ rights to well being and training – hindering their means to totally take part in public life – and violated Article 25 of the Constitution, which prohibits discrimination on the idea of intercourse.
Khan advised NCS on Sunday that the continued case “highlighted the absurdity of the taxation regime” on sanitary objects.
“If there was never a constitutional petition, the government would not have woken up to the fact that even the sales tax is wrong,” he stated.
In current years, different governments – together with India, Nepal, Scotland and extra than a dozen US states – have made related reforms to decrease or take away taxes on period merchandise.
The UN Women company welcomed the “important step” on Monday, saying that elevated affordability of menstrual merchandise will allow extra girls and ladies to keep within the office and faculty.
Bushra Mahnoor, a reproductive justice activist, hailed the “symbolic value” of the proposed change.
“More than the impact this tax removal is going to have in prices, is the impact it has in de-stigmatizing menstruation, and we should not take that lightly,” she advised NCS.
But Mahnoor, who co-founded the Pakistan-based non-profit Mahwari Justice, which seeks to finish period poverty and menstrual stigma, cautioned that the intervention “does not impact all the menstruators in the country, and definitely not the most vulnerable ones.”
As of mid-2025, practically 45% of the nation’s inhabitants have been dwelling under the World Bank’s international decrease middle-income poverty line of $4.20 (about 1,175 Pakistani rupees) per day, it reported final 12 months.
However, on common, a pack of 10 business sanitary pads prices greater than a 3rd of a day’s revenue and won’t be sufficient to final one lady or lady for a month.
Following a listening to in late November, a courtroom in Rawalpindi ordered the federal government to give a “timely response” to Khan and Omer’s arguments as said of their petition, so the case may proceed.
In a abstract of these responses earlier this 12 months, seen by NCS, the federal government denied that such tax charges have been “excessive” and “discriminatory” as a result of the construction was “designed to meet the revenue needs of the state, which funds public services, including those benefitting women.”
Now that the federal authorities has shared their replies to Khan and Omer’s petition, the case is due for last arguments, after which a choice will likely be given by the judiciary. If Omer and Khan’s case is profitable, the ruling may immediate the scrapping of all taxes associated to sanitary merchandise – together with customs tax on uncooked supplies – or of import tax on imported menstrual objects.
“Our fight is very much ongoing, but we are elated that at least the government has realized that these are not luxury products,” added Khan.