Increasing sugar tax will cost more jobs – industry

With the ending of the moratorium on increases to the Health Promotion Levy (HPL), or so-called sugar tax, in 2022, renewed calls to double the levy could cost the sugar industry millions of rands.

- Pieter Dempsey

Thomas Funke, CEO of the South African Cane Growers’ Association, said the Healthy Living Alliance (HEALA) as well as a group of public health scholars, most of whom were based overseas, had written an open letter to National Treasury and the South African Revenue Service requesting that the HPL on sugary drinks be increased from 11% to 20%.

Funke said that since the moratorium on increasing the tax would end next year, it was vital that the public and policymakers were made aware of the consequences of the HPL on the sugar industry, in particular the jobs and revenue losses for growers.