Dr M: Sugar tax to fund healthy breakfast programme in schools

KUALA LUMPUR: The government will use revenue collected from the upcoming soda tax to fund a programme to provide free healthy breakfasts for primary school students, says Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad.

The Prime Minister said that revenue collected from the soda tax would be channelled to the proposed programme from next year.

"We want our kids to be strong and healthy to perform in school," said Dr Mahathir during his keynote address at Invest Malaysia 2019 in Shangri-La Hotel on Tuesday (March 19).

The soda tax will be implemented on July 1, where a tax of 40 sen per litre will be imposed on drinks containing more than five grams of sugar or sugar-based sweetener per 100ml, as well as fruit and vegetable juices with sugar content of more than 12 grams per 100ml.

The sugar tax was supposed to be implemented on April 1, but the government has since deferred it to July 1.

"There will be no new tax for this year, except for the sugar tax which we have already announced," said Dr Mahathir.

"It is delayed a bit as we want to ensure that the mechanism is effective to primarily meet our health objectives," he added.

To ensure the sustainability of the economy, Dr Mahathir said that Malaysians must improve their productivity, which can be done with a quality workforce enabled by quality education.

According to Dr Mahathir, bigger reforms will be expected after the special task force to review the national education policy from preschool to tertiary education, completes their findings next month.

The reforms, said Dr Mahathir, would touch on several key areas – improving English language competency, quality of teachers, and the employability of graduates.

"In the last 10 months, key steps have been taken towards these ends. These include reforming the curriculum where the national civic and religious education curriculum are currently under review to ensure values are practiced and inculcated.

"In other words, let's make national schools great again."

Dr Mahathir said that exams for Standard One to Three have been abolished to make way for a more holistic development of each child.

He added that the number of science, technology, engineering and mathematics graduates will be increased by making it more accessible, experiential and meaningful.