Alcohol sale banned with immediate effect

In his speech tonight, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa banned alcohol sales with immediate effect.

In practice this means that the liquor stores have to stop selling alcohol, instead of opening tomorrow morning. Restaurants will no longer be able to sell alcohol with their meals. As alcohol is the primary source of income in most restaurants, this will have a tremendous impact on their profitability.

We expect the impact on South Africa's tax revenue to be excessive as well.

In our humble opinion, the strategy is misguided. If alcohol consumption was a problem for the hospitals, as claimed by President Ramaphosa, then the better answer would have been to double the taxation on alcohol.