EVALUATING THE EFFECTIVENESS OF SUGAR TAX TO COMBAT SOUTH AFRICAN’S SWEET TOOTH

Year 2017, Volume: 9 Issue: 2, 83 - 98, 01.06.2017

Joani Dams

Abstract

The former Minister of Finance, Pravin Gordhan, introduced the proposed sugar
tax legislation for South Africa in the 2016 Budget Speech to address obesity in
South Africa. The World Health Organisation (WHO) encourages more healthy
behaviour and supports the implementation of sugar tax. Sugar tax is the tax levy
on sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs), such as soft drinks and energy drinks, and
although the South African legislature has not yet formalised such into legislation,
lessons can be drawn from foreign practices. An exploratory research study was
conducted to explore how Finland, Hungary and the United Kingdom
implemented their sugar tax legislation. These countries make use of the same tax
base, namely the threshold approach, as the proposed sugar tax base for South
Africa. South Africa’s proposed sugar tax will be measured against the four
maxims of a good tax policy (equity, certainty, economy and convenience). With
this evaluation as benchmark, the main objective of the study is to determine
whether the proposed sugar tax rate in South Africa will be effective and if the
proposed sugar tax rate will be in line with the selected countries discussed in the
paper. In order to reach the objective, a partially mixed sequential dominant status
design was followed. This study finds that the four maxims are not met and the
proposed sugar tax legislation require much needed amendatory action by the
legislature. Also, the proposed sugar tax rate of 2,1 cent per gram of sugar content
in excess of 4 grams of 100 millilitre is the second highest sugar tax rate when
compared to the three selected countries but may not be enough to combat
excessive SSBs consumption as consumers may choose cheaper alternative SSBs
options.

Keywords

South Africa, Sugar tax, Sugar-sweetened beverages, World Health Organisation