Health Taxes: GhNCDA wants Sugar Sweetened Beverages taxed

Health Taxes: GhNCDA wants Sugar Sweetened Beverages taxed

The Ghana Non-Communicable Diseases Alliance (GhNCDA) and other health Civil Society Organisations under the Advocating for Health Project (A4H), are making frantic efforts to ensure sugar sweetened beverages (SSBs) produced in the country are taxed.

The push for taxes on SSBs by the GhNCDA, is to facilitate the reduction in consumption of SSBs among Ghanaians.

This is aside the health taxes being a potentially reliable source of revenue for government, particularly given the usually tight fiscal space of government.

With the imposition of taxes on SSBs, government is likely to rake in billions of cedis in annual revenue – South Africa in the first year of its imposition of taxes on SSBs, generated 3.2bn Rand in revenue.

Available data indicates that, about five (5) African countries with Nigeria being the most recent country to do so, have introduced taxes on SSBs produced in their respective countries.

While taxes on non-communicable disease causing substances such as alcohol and tobacco exist, taxes on SSBs does not exist hence the call by the GhNCDA as it is deemed an effective intervention in reducing consumption of SSBs.

A plethora of research has linked the consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages to the increase of non-communicable diseases (NCDs) such as obesity, type 2 diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure, stroke, kidney diseases, non-alcoholic liver disease and strange cancers, most of which could lead to sudden and untimely deaths.

Research further indicates that by 2030, non-communicable diseases caused mainly by the consumption of SSBs, will be the leading cause of deaths in Ghana.

SSBs are liquids sweetened with various forms of sugars such as white or brown sugar, corn sweetener, corn syrup, dextrose, fructose, glucose, high-fructose corn syrup, honey, lactose, malt syrup, maltose, molasses, raw sugar, and sucrose.

They usually come in the form of regular soda (not sugar-free), fruit drinks, sports drinks, energy drinks, sweetened waters, as well as coffee and tea beverages.

The Advocating for Health Project is a collaboration between Academia led by the School of Public Health, University of Ghana, Legon, and Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) in Ghana led by Ghana NCD Alliance (GhNCDA), Ghana Public Health Association (GPHA) and Ghana Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics (GAND).

The project is scholarly activism and advocacy driven to create a favourable environment and stakeholder buy-in for food-related fiscal policies in Ghana.

Speaking at a sensitisation workshop on SSBs for journalists in Accra on October 28, 2022, a Professor of  Public Health at the University of Ghana and principal investigator for the Advocating for Health Project, Professor Amos Laar, noted the A4H project seeks to achieve the following;

• To identify a realistic legal pathway to enact the SSB tax in Ghana