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Govt faces call to tax sweet drinks in bid to curb diabetes
CISDI is urging the government to impose excise taxes on sugar-sweetened beverages amid lacking support in handling the country's growing diabetes crisis.
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Sweet and sugary drinks often accompany breaking-of-the-fast snacks during the Islamic month of Ramadan. The government faces growing pressure to impose a tax on sugary drinks due to increased prevalence of diabetes. (The Jakarta Post/Budi Sutrisno)
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Jakarta-based public health think tank is making an urgent appeal for the government to impose excise taxes on all packaged sugary beverages flooding the market, on account of the increasing prevalence of diabetes and swelling healthcare spending for obesity-related diseases.
Practical solutions are sought as Indonesia tries to recover from a devastating COVID-19 pandemic that has exposed cracks in its healthcare system, as well as the lack of attention to serious illnesses such as Type 2 diabetes.
In its latest report, the Center for Indonesia’s Strategic Development Initiatives (CISDI) highlighted the fact that a tax on sugar-sweetened beverages is a cost-effective policy recommendation that could go a long way toward improving people’s health and economic wellbeing.
The research points to case studies in Mexico and the United Kingdom, which suggest that introducing even a 10 percent tax was already effective in reducing consumption.
“The implementation of a 10 percent tax excise on sugary drinks in Mexico could reduce the consumption of sweetened beverages by 19 percent. [Meanwhile] in the UK, the sugary beverages tax has led to a widespread reformulation of products to reduce sugar levels by manufacturers,” CISDI researchers said in the report.
Some studies, the think tank noted, have suggested that imposing an excise tax of Rp 5,000 (35 US cents) per liter on sugary drinks could prevent between 12,000 and 417,000 cases of obesity in Indonesia in the next 25 years, and around 63,000 to 1.4 million cases of Type 2 diabetes.
Researchers also noted that based on estimates from the Finance Ministry, taxing sugar-sweetened beverages between Rp 1,500 and Rp 2,500 per liter could generate state revenue figures somewhere in the ballpark of Rp 2.7 trillion to Rp 6.25 trillion annually, which could be used to increase much-needed funding for non-communicable disease (NCD) prevention.
