BLANTYRE-(MaraviPost)-In May 2024, the Malawi Revenue Authority (MRA) put the first Kalondola stamps on cigarettes and alcohol.
The promise was simple: give the revenue authority visibility over every regulated product so it could verify what was produced, what was sold and what duty was due.
Two years later, the question that matters is simple: what has changed?
The short answer is that excise collections have risen, more manufacturers have registered, and customs and domestic enforcement are now more closely integrated.
Those gains have given MRA sufficient confidence to raise its revenue targets sharply. The longer answer is worth walking through.
Start with the numbers. In 2025, domestic excise revenue reached approximately MK202 billion, exceeding the MK199 billion target, according to the MRA.
Building on that performance, the authority has set a 2026 domestic excise target of MK273 billion – a 37 percent increase on the previous year’s target-with Kalondola identified as one of the key measures expected to support stronger compliance and revenue collection.
The broader revenue picture reinforces the trend. Between April and June 2026, MRA collected MK1.398 trillion in total revenue, surpassing its quarterly target of MK1.378 trillion by approximately MK20 billion. That total includes income tax, VAT, customs duties and excise.
While no single intervention explains overall revenue performance, excise has emerged as one of the authority’s strongest-performing revenue streams during the period.
MRA Head of Corporate Affairs Wilma Chalulu states that the introduction of the extended excise tax stamp programme, many local manufacturers of excisable products have recorded substantial increases in their revenue contributions.
“Some have registered growth of up to 100 percent, while others have recorded increases of 200 percent or more. Behind the collections sits a change in behavior.”
According to MRA, excise payments from alcoholic beverage manufacturers have risen by between 500 and 600 percent since the stamps were introduced.
Non-alcoholic beverages show a similar pattern.
Participation increased alongside the rise in collections.
The number of registered manufacturers has more than doubled since the programme began.
MRA attributes part of that increase to stronger compliance made possible by the digital stamp programme: businesses that once produced and sold outside the tax system have come in, because unstamped products can now be spotted and seized.
According to Chalulu, the Authority has strengthened oversight across registration, ordering, issuance and market monitoring, allowing officials to identify non-compliance more effectively.
She explains further, “Kalondola has strengthened MRA’s visibility over excisable products throughout the supply chain. Through controlled registration, ordering, issuance, reconciliation and market monitoring, the Authority is now better positioned to identify non-compliance and ensure that excise tax stamps are used for their intended products.”
“The mechanics behind the shift are simple: every bottle, packet and can in the regulated categories carries a stamp with a unique digital identity. MRA can check any product on any shelf and know instantly whether duty was paid on it”.
She adds, “Before the stamps, excise collection ran on declarations, and the gap between what a factory produced and what it declared was invisible. Two years of stamps have narrowed that gap product by product.
“Beyond product verification, the Kalondola System enables MRA to monitor tax stamp ordering, issuance, activation and usage throughout the supply chain in near real time”.
According to the Authority, the platform combines advanced data analytics and artificial intelligence to detect anomalies, identify compliance risks and highlight suspicious operators, products or geographical areas.
These insights help MRA prioritise inspections and target enforcement where the risk of non-compliance is greatest.
Responding to the existence of counterfeit tax stamps, Chalulu explains, “The existence of counterfeit tax stamps is not linked to the efficacy of the program. Just like banknotes or passports, criminals may try to copy secure government documents.
“The key issue is whether the system can help authorities identify fake stamps and provide evidence for investigation and prosecution.
“There is also a difference between selling unstamped products and using counterfeit stamps. Counterfeit stamps show a deliberate attempt to copy a government security feature and defraud the State.”
Castel Malawi, one of the country’s largest beverage producers, publicly supported the initiative, saying the digital excise tax stamps enable accurate revenue capture that can be reinvested in essential services and economic growth.
Castel Malawi Managing Director Thomas Reynaud emphasized the importance of consumer vigilance in the fight against counterfeit products, which he said pose serious health risks and undermine legal trade.
“Castel Malawi Limited urges all customers to remain alert and ensure that all spirits purchased are genuine and compliant with legal standards,” said Reynaud. “Authentic Castel products carry digital tax stamps, date stamps, and batch numbers, which are clear indicators of their legitimacy and regulatory compliance.”
In supporting digital tax reforms, economic and policy expert Dumbani Mzale notes the substantial economic and governance benefits that digital tax stamps can bring to public finance management, including increased revenue collection and the reduction of illicit trade.
Mzale said, “Digital tax stamps (Kalondola), particularly for excisable goods like alcohol and tobacco, help governments all over the world to effectively control and collect taxes.
“By minimizing opportunities for fraud and tax evasion, the state can significantly boost its revenue streams, and Malawi could be no exception if this agenda could be implemented to the letter.”
He added, “For too long, Malawi has been a victim of counterfeit products, especially beer and other key consumables. This has resulted in the country losing billions of Kwachas in potential tax revenue, money that could have helped reduce the gap between total government expenditure and total domestic revenue, which includes tax and non-tax revenue.”
One of the retailers, Christopher Luhanga, at Songwe border in Karonga district testifies how Kalondola has helped them to identify legit products on the market.
“There is slight change indeed on stamped and unstamped products especially on soft drinks, energy drinks, cigarettes since Kalondola established. We are now able to identify original products from manufacturer,” the retailer testifies.
On whether to ask stamped or unstamped products when selling, Luhanga adds, “To be honest with you, it’s really to see a customer asking about tax stamped products. Even myself when ordering the products I just purchase without asking as I’m fully aware of these tax stamps on products, maybe we just need more awareness on it”.
The retailer therefore appeals to consumers, “Let them embrace tax stamps initiative on products that they get original products not fake ones on the market. Fake products have baring impact on our health especially soft drinks, energy drinks, feezy drinks”
For legitimate businesses, that is the point. A brewer paying duty on every bottle may compete against rivals declaring only part of their production.
The flow of untaxed goods that once slipped through the border and undercut taxed local products has been sharply reduced at entry.
Since February 2025, when Kalondola was connected to Asycuda, the customs system that processes imports, specified imports are now required to meet stamp requirements as part of the customs-clearance process, making non-compliant consignments easier to identify before entry.
The clearest signal of what MRA makes of the record is what it is asking for next.
The authority has set a domestic excise target of MK273 billion for 2026, an increase of 37 percent on the target set for 2025, and has identified Kalondola as one of the key measures expected to support it by improving the tracking of excisable goods, widening compliance and helping detect products entering the market outside the tax system.
Customs, which achieved approximately 99 percent of its 2025 revenue target, carries a growth target of roughly 31 percent for 2026, with the stamp project regarded as instrumental.
The higher target reflects MRA’s expectation that recent gains can be sustained, with Kalondola identified as one of the measures expected to support that performance.
The record is not only MRA’s account. An IMF report on Malawi records that tax collections rose by 39.9 percent in nominal terms during the 2024/25 fiscal year and lists tax stamps among the revenue-administration measures introduced alongside digitalisation, stronger audits and debt recovery.
The technology is supplied by SICPA Malawi, a subsidiary of Switzerland-based SICPA SA, whose secure traceability systems are deployed in nine other African countries, including Tanzania, Kenya and Uganda.
Kenya’s longer experience shows what can happen when digital traceability is backed by sustained enforcement.
The African Tax Administration Forum reports that the illicit cigarette market fell from 15 percent in 2003 to 5 percent in 2016 under the Excisable Goods Management System. That outcome reflected more than tax stamps alone: it combined secure digital traceability with producer and importer licensing, track-and-trace capabilities, stronger coordination between enforcement agencies, border scanning and tougher enforcement against illicit trade.
Two years in, the work is not finished. Digital tax stamps make tax evasion more difficult, not impossible.
Their success still depends on consistent enforcement, effective market surveillance and continued cooperation between government and legitimate businesses.
If the first two years carry a lesson, it is the chain the programme was built on.
Secure digital traceability gives a revenue authority visibility. Visibility enables more effective enforcement. And more effective enforcement supports compliance, protects legitimate businesses and strengthens domestic revenue mobilisation.
The stamps gave MRA the visibility; inspections, border controls and penalties turned it into compliance.
Better visibility, backed by inspections and penalties, has encouraged more manufacturers to enter the formal system by reducing the advantages of operating outside it.
Looking ahead, Chalulu says MRA will strengthen market surveillance, monitor production more closely and continue engaging manufacturers as the programme enters its third year.
The measure of success is simple: taxes due are taxes collected, honest businesses are not undercut by tax cheats, and public revenue reaches the national treasury.
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