The Japanese tax service has launched a contest, calling on citizens to come up with innovative ways to revive falling alcohol sales, hoping to encourage young adults to hit the bar more often and give a shot to government revenues.
The National Tax Agency (NTA) has dubbed the new campaign ‘Sake Viva!’ after Japan’s iconic rice wine, calling on anyone aged between 20 and 39 to submit business ideas for the country’s alcohol industry, which is lagging in the wake of Covid-19 and declining drinking habits nationwide.
As noted on an official government website that caught international attention this week following local media reports, the contest will run until September 9, and asks for new products and designs as well as ways to promote drinking at home.
Winners will be invited to an awards ceremony in Tokyo in November, and the tax body has vowed to back investments into the winning idea.
The NTA noted that taxes on alcohol made up about 3% of the government’s tax revenue in 2011, but had dropped to 2% by 2020, citing a need to revitalize booze sales.
As seen among the same age group in other countries, young adults in Japan have significantly cut down their alcohol consumption in recent decades, with average adult intake per year falling from 100 liters in 1995 to 75 liters in 2020.
Though Japan’s health ministry said it was not participating in the initiative, it voiced hopes that the tax agency would encourage only the appropriate amount of alcohol consumption, and stated that it remains in contact with the NTA on the issue.
The contest is not the first of its kind, as the NTA rolled out a project called ‘Enjoy Sake!’ last year in a similar effort to gin up new business ideas.
It’s unclear whether the last campaign saw success given the ongoing drop in revenues, but the agency is taking another crack at the idea regardless.
RT. com / ABC Flash Point News 2022.
There’s a very easy and simple and what I would have thought obvious solution. Drastically lower the tax on alcohol. This will be more than made up by the increase in sales. Some years ago a similar solution was adopted by the Canadian government regarding tobacco when sales dropped and tax revenue collapsed because people were buying bootleg tobacco because the tax on tobacco was too high. Demand creates supply and lower prices create demand but this seems to get lost on many governments. The basic laws of supply and demand seem to regularly escape them.
Get the help of prime ministers Bojo (Britain) and Sanna (Swiss), they certainly knows how to party. Maybe the Finnish PM could also break ranks?
Big Business always wins at the expense of Liver cancer – Lung cancer –so much for the “better world /healthy living ” unlike many I have seen blackened lungs after decades of smoking and dying of alcoholism is a slow -painful death when all your body organs are destroyed having worked in a hospital — but what the heck ! you are performing a ( profitable ) service to Big Business and that counts more than human life. Heard of British American Tobacco (BAT ) ?-check it out -over 6 million people worldwide die of tobacco death each year-no class… Read more »