A bartender pours a beer at Radium Beer Hall in Orange Grove, Johannesburg. It claims to be Joburg's oldest running bar.
South Africans became poorer between 2017 and 2024, but consumption of tax-paid alcohol increased – which challenges the alcohol industry's claims about the growth of the illicit market as Treasury considers higher excise taxes.
According to analysis by University of Cape Town economist Corné van Walbeek, director of UCT's Research Unit on the Economics of Excisable Products, aggregate consumption of tax-paid alcohol increased by 24.2% between 2017 and 2024.
The population aged 15 and older grew by 14.7% over the same period, which Van Walbeek calculated meant per-capita consumption of tax-paid alcohol increased by 8.3%.
At the same time, Van Walbeek's presentation showed that per-capita GDP declined by 4.7%, while household disposable income per capita fell by 1.5%. "Essentially what that boils down to is we have become poorer over the past seven years," he said.
