In recent weeks, alcohol industry groups in at least ten countries have made the identical argument against alcohol taxation and availability policy: that higher taxes or improved common sense limits on availability would drive people to illicit alcohol. In Uganda, the Uganda Alcohol Industry Association is recirculating a Euromonitor study it commissioned in 2025, claiming that two-thirds of the alcohol used in the country is illicit, just as the government moves to reduce sales hours. In six of the ten countries the numbers come from the same supplier.

“The Alcohol Market Uganda Rarely Talks About”

ChimpReports reports:

“Illicit alcohol accounted for 67.3% of Uganda’s total alcohol market by volume in 2024, highlighting the scale of a parallel market that is largely outside the formal tax and regulatory system, according to a Euromonitor International study commissioned by the Uganda Alcohol Industry Association (UAIA).

“Ndungu also called for a more predictable tax framework, arguing that taxes on legal products should take account of affordability and the risk of pushing consumers towards cheaper illicit alternatives.”

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Other Articles on the Same Topic

  • Building a Safer Alcohol Market by Tackling Illicit Trade (The Independent)
  • Alcohol Uganda Refuses to Talk About (Daily Monitor)
  • ABAK Urges Tighter Border Controls to Protect Consumers From Counterfeit Alcohol (KBC)
  • Federal Govt Launches Alcohol Policy, Targets Harmful Use, Illicit Trade (Premium Times)
  • Illicit Alcohol Costs Tanzania Over Sh1 Trillion Annually, Study Finds (The Citizen)
  • Illicit Trade Threatens 70% of Alcohol Market, Undermines Manufacturing Growth – Zambian Manufacturers (Zambia Monitor)
  • Proposed New Alcohol Taxes Would Threaten Jobs, Boost Illicit Industry, Warns SAB (EWN)
  • Tax Hikes Risk Pushing Consumers to Illicit Liquor: DCSL (Daily Mirror)
  • Liquor Makers Oppose “Substantial” Excise Tax Hike (BusinessWorld)

Assessment

Between mid-August and early September, alcohol industry lobby groups in Uganda, Kenya, South Africa, Sri Lanka and the Philippines all deployed their scare tactics of alcohol policy driving up illicit alcohol. In Nigeria, the health minister repeated the alcohol industry’s illicit trade figures at the launch of national alcohol policy. Weeks before, in late July, Zambia’s alcohol manufacturers used the same scare tactic ahead of the country’s budget, and in Tanzania the alcohol industry ran the campaign from February to April ahead of the June budget.

Several of these countries, South Africa, the Philippines, Uganda, Tanzania, Zambia, have alcohol tax or availability policy decisions pending, and the alcohol industry propaganda about illicit alcohol is arriving in each of them at the point where governments decide.

The illicit alcohol scare is the alcohol industry’s standard response wherever alcohol taxation or availability policy reaches the political and public agenda: non verifiable, industry-commissioned estimates of a “vast” illicit market, a revenue-loss figure built on it, and the conclusion that any policy raising the price of legal alcohol or making the products of alcohol companies less available will push people to illicit products.

Movendi International has documented the tactic in 24 countries over seven years, with Euromonitor International supplying the numbers in most of them. This analysis has shown how the focus on illicit products masks the harm caused by legal alcohol.

The most recent example: The Uganda Alcohol Industry Association is the trade body of Nile Breweries, AB InBev’s Ugandan subsidiary, and Uganda Breweries, part of East African Breweries, the group Diageo is selling to Asahi. Over two weeks in August it placed the same illicit alcohol figures three times in Ugandan media:

The government, Mr Njuki writes, “moves to strengthen regulation of alcohol consumption and address concerns around the availability and sale of alcohol”, and “regulation should not unintentionally push consumers towards unsafe alternatives by making legitimate products inaccessible”.

Such framing disguises the risks and harms inherent in the products and practices of the Big Alcohol companies that Mr Njuki works for.

The national Alcohol Control Bill has been blocked since 2024 after sustained alcohol industry interference, and the minister responsible has turned to local ordinances on sales hours instead. The alcohol industry’s response is the tactic Movendi International has documented in Uganda before: telling people that illicit alcohol is the real danger, that formal products are the “safe alternative,” and that any policy that raises the price of alcohol or that places common sense limits on alcohol availability would fuel illicit alcohol.

Euromonitor International produced the study, Understanding the Illicit Alcohol Market – Uganda, in May 2025 – fifteen months before the relaunch of the current propaganda machine – and Movendi International has examined its methods. The inputs were visits to only 50 outlets, just 15 interviews with stakeholders drawn mostly from the alcohol industry, and an online survey of 1,004 people asked about their perceptions, not about their own alcohol use. The national volume estimate comes from a model the report never describes, with no error margins. The fiscal loss figure assumes that every litre of illicit alcohol would otherwise be bought legally at full excise, which ignores price elasticity – the foundation of alcohol tax economics. The numbers also drift between the placements: Ndungu cites 67.5% and Shs2 trillion in lost taxes, ChimpReports 67.3% and Shs3 trillion.

In Kenya, the Alcoholic Beverages Association of Kenya – whose members include East African Breweries (currently owned by Diageo), Heineken and Kenya Wine Agencies – called on the government to invest in border controls, market surveillance and product traceability, and advised people to buy alcohol only from licensed outlets. The occasion was a wave of consumer complaints and online discussion about “fake alcohol”. The association’s chair, Kui Kinyanjui, offered no figures this time. When ABAK took the same narrative to Kenya’s parliament as pro-health tax proposals advanced, its numbers came from a Euromonitor study the trade body had commissioned in 2025.

In Tanzania, the campaign ran ahead of the June budget. A Euromonitor study released in February put illicit alcohol at 61% of all alcohol used in the country and the revenue loss at Sh1.026 trillion a year. It was commissioned by the Confederation of Tanzania Industries together with Serengeti Breweries, the East African Breweries subsidiary, and the deputy minister for industry and trade spoke at its release, calling for “urgent and coordinated action”. In April, the managing director of Tanzania Breweries – AB InBev’s subsidiary – told The Citizen that “sharp and rapid increases in excise levels” widen the price gap to illicit alcohol and asked for excise increases that are “predictable and inflation-related”, as parliament prepared the budget. The minister for industry and trade has since repeated the study’s figures – 60% of the market, Sh1 trillion a year – as government data.

In Zambia, the Zambia Association of Manufacturers told its pre-budget meeting in July that illicit trade accounts for 70% of the alcohol market and blamed repeated excise increases: “Evidence suggests that continually increasing excise taxes may now be producing diminishing returns,” its policy committee chair said. No source for the figure was given. Zambia’s budget is usually presented in September.

In Nigeria, the alcohol industry’s numbers have reached government policy itself. Launching the Nigeria Alcohol Policy 2026–2030 on 27 August, the Coordinating Minister of Health and Social Welfare cited “industry estimates” that about 40% of spirits and wines are illicit or unrecorded, at a cost of more than N428 billion a year in lost revenue. The figures come from a Euromonitor report that the Spirits and Wines Association of Nigeria has promoted since April, when its president told a workshop that “if taxation is excess, then it opens the door for some of these things to happen”. The policy arrives as the food and drug agency NAFDAC orders the recall of alcohol in sachets and bottles below 200ml – a ban the alcohol industry has fought with inflated job claims and fake civil society groups, and which six months into enforcement has yet to clear the products from shelves – and as a national alcohol control bill awaits committee consideration in the House of Representatives.

In South Africa, the argument was made against a live proposal. The National Treasury is consulting on taxing beer and wine by alcohol content, and South African Breweries – the local arm of AB InBev – told EWN that above-inflation excise increases would widen the price gap between legal and illicit alcohol, citing a Euromonitor estimate of R16.5 billion in lost VAT and excise revenue in 2024. SAB asked instead for inflation-linked increases. The estimate comes from a study the Drinks Federation of South Africa commissioned, and at the Treasury’s own workshop the same week, researchers countered the scare with revenue data showing no rapidly growing illicit market.

In Sri Lanka, Distilleries Company of Sri Lanka, the country’s largest spirits producer, warned in its annual report that further tax increases risk pushing consumers to illicit liquor and named changes to the excise or corporate tax regime as the largest external variable it faces in the coming year. As the Daily Mirror noted, the company provided no data on the size of the illicit market. Its own figures in the same report show gross turnover up 18.3% and excise payments up 20.7% in the year to March 2026 – legal sales grew despite the tax increases the company objects to.

In the Philippines, the Department of Finance proposes to raise the excise tax on distilled spirits from P74.16 to P157 per proof litre in 2027, with 6% annual indexation, on the grounds that spirits are undertaxed relative to beer by alcohol content. At a House Committee on Ways and Means hearing, the Distilled Spirits Association of the Philippines, the Alcoholic Beverages Alliance of the Philippines and San Miguel Brewery opposed the increase, warning that higher rates would hurt legitimate businesses, reduce government revenue and encourage illicit trade. The hearing follows a national campaign by health advocates for higher alcohol taxes, in a country where tobacco taxes have risen far faster than alcohol taxes.

Two more cases come from outside Africa and Asia: In Australia, the Spirits Council warned that the twice-yearly excise indexation would drive demand for illicit products, drawing the parallel with tobacco. In Mexico, the spirits lobby’s renewed proposal for a “revenue-neutral” tax redesign cited a claim that 44.2% of spirits are informal, and the industry front group FISAC published a “how to spot fake alcohol” guide based on Euromonitor – the same report Movendi International exposed last year.

In Uganda, Tanzania, Zambia, South Africa and the Philippines the claim was aimed at a pending decision – local ordinances, national budgets, the Treasury’s excise tax reform, the Department of Finance’s spirits excise proposal. In Nigeria and Tanzania it has been written into the government’s own account of the problem.

Movendi International cannot say for certain whether these campaigns are coordinated or not. The numbers, however, come from the same supplier in at least six of the ten countries: Euromonitor International, paid by the alcohol industry in Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, South Africa and Mexico, and promoted by the spirits trade body in Nigeria. The remedy proposed is also the same: in Uganda, South Africa and Tanzania, AB InBev’s subsidiaries each asked for a “predictable” tax framework, with low or no alcohol tax increases.

The WHO technical manual on alcohol tax policy states that the alcohol industry “has an incentive to overstate the level of illicit trade in order to contest tax increases”, and that price and tax “are not key determinants of unrecorded trade”, which the manual attributes to weak governance and tax administration.