Use sugar and salt tax to fund healthcare, says BAMP head

President of the Barbados Association of Medical Practitioners (BAMP) Dr Lynda Williams is suggesting that the revenues collected from the 20 per cent sugar-sweetened beverage excise tax and the soon-to-be-implemented tax on products high in salt content be used specifically within the health sector.

She told Barbados TODAY she would prefer if the money collected by the government from those taxes be set aside specifically to boost the budget for healthcare, rather than be placed into the Consolidated Fund – the government account into which all revenues are paid and from which all spending is made.

“If we just put it in the general funds and hope that you can increase your health fund, that most likely will not happen,” the prominent doctor said.

“My feeling about all those things is that it works as long as the money that is collected from this goes towards health expenditure. If you are just putting on a tax and put it in the general fund as just another collection of taxation, and you hope that it pans out to be more expenditure for health, that is less significant than knowing that [based] on this revenue, this is how much to increase health expenditure by.”

Barbados has one of the highest rates of overweight and obese populations within Latin America and the Caribbean, with about 30 per cent of children considered overweight and 14 per cent obese.

About one in every three Barbadian adults is considered overweight, and a similar number is obese.

In an effort to help reduce the intake of sugar-sweetened beverages among Barbadians and control non-communicable diseases (NCDs) such as diabetes, the government introduced a 10 per cent excise tax on sugar-sweetened beverages in 2015. This was designed to generate in excess of $10 million in its first year.

Effective April 1, 2022, the Mia Mottley administration increased the excise tax on sweetened drinks to 20 per cent.

Dr Williams said she supported the tax measure but stressed that it was important for the government to know exactly how much was being collected and put that towards the development of the health sector.

The government is currently in the process of reviewing a draft policy for similar taxation on products high in salt content. This could be ready for implementation as early as the first quarter of next year.

“We have had the discussion about sugar taxes and we have implemented sugar-sweetened beverage taxes; now there is the discussion about salt…. Taxes have been shown in other countries to cause a reduction in spending when people are purchasing,” said Williams.

A joint University of the West Indies and Cambridge University study released in 2019 concluded that Barbadians were buying fewer sweet drinks and getting more bottled waters and non-sugar alternatives.

It showed that consumption dropped by some 10 per cent one year after the tax was implemented, when compared to two years before.

marlonmadden@barbadostoday.bb