Osborne Proposes New ‘Sugar Tax’ To Battle With Child Obesity


04/13/2016

In order to curb the popularity of soft drinks in children which leads to obesity, Chancellor Osborne puts a tax leash on the manufacturing companies.


Dailycsr.com – 12 April 2016 – An announcement made by George Osborne, the “Chancellor of the Exchequer” of the United Kingdom, reveals that the soft drinks will be put under a “new sugar tax” in his budget which will be effective from the month of April 2018.
 
Campaigners have hailed the said decision as “a significant step” toward fighting obesity in children. The celebrity chef, Jamie Oliver has been among the “most high-profile supporter” of Osborne decision, whereby he introduced a “sugar levy in his restaurants” besides setting up an “e-petition” gathering the support of over “150,000 people”. The sugar tax will be applicable to drinks proportionally to their sugar contents, especially the fizz ones will be the main target for they are quite “popular among teenagers”.
 
However, the milk based drinks along with pure fruit juices will be exempted from this tax; in addition to that “smallest producers” will also enjoy an exemption. The volume of the sugar used to sweeten drinks will determine the level of tax for the producer companies. In fact, this rule will also include the importers. According to Sangeeta Haindl:
“There will be two bands—one for total sugar content above 5g per 100 milliliters, and a second, higher band for the sugariest drinks with more than 8g per 100 milliliters. The types of drinks that would fall under the higher rate of the sugar tax include full-strength Coca-Cola and Pepsi. The lower rate would catch drinks such as Dr Pepper, Fanta, Sprite and Schweppes Indian tonic water”.
 
Nevertheless, Coca Cola together will other soft drink companies claim that Chancellor’s new tax scheme will not be able to “reduce obesity” for there is no such evidence to that effect. However, data collected from other countries that have imposed similar sugar tax though suggest that their methods have shown “an impact at the bottom line”, for example, in Mexico purchases of such drinks have fallen by six percent after the tax has been made effective.
 
The levy of suggested by Osborne will be affecting over three hundred fifty products reports “Mysupermarket.co.uk”, while Osborne stated that the money collect from this tax will annually amount to “an estimated £520m”. The fund thus collected will be used for introducing “sport in primary schools”.
 
As per research data, almost fifty percent of seven years’ old children population are not doing “enough exercise”; as a result in the starting years of primary school one in each ten children tend to be overweight, while by the end the ration increases to one in five. There is a growing fear due to extrapolation that the statistics could follow a steep upward graph in the coming years.






References:
http://www.ethicalperformance.com/