Some sugar tax may go to health drives
Treasury in talks over how to use portion of revenue
The Treasury and the Department of Health are discussing the scope for directing some of the revenue raised by the government’s proposed sugar tax to programmes aimed at promoting better health, it emerged on Tuesday. The Treasury had committed itself to making on-budget allocations to specific health programmes, chief director of economic tax analysis Cecil Morden told Business Day. It did not support the legislative earmarking of tax revenues, as it made it difficult to reallocate the funds, he said. He was speaking on the sidelines of public hearings convened by Parliament on the Treasury’s proposed tax on sugar-sweetened beverages, which it hopes to implement on April 1. The Treasury has proposed a tax of 2.29c per gram of sugar, which equates to a 20% tax incidence on a litre of Coca-Cola, which contains about 106g of sugar.
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