Sweetened beverages to be taxed further for the sake of public health: Health Minister

SUNGAI BULOH: Another new tax that is being sold as part of the "War on Sugar" has been proposed for sweetened beverages, says Datuk Seri Dr Dzulkefly Ahmad.

The Health Minister said the new tax will be called the sugar-sweetened beverage (SSB) tax, and will be introduced in the upcoming Budget 2025.

He said this comes after the previous 10 sen increase for SSB in Budget 2024 to 50 sen per litre had proven to successfully reduce the consumption of sugary drinks by 9.25% nationwide, and this tax is part of the ministry's move to reduce non-communicable diseases among Malaysians.

“From this statistic, we see that the SSB has been effective at cutting down sugar consumption among the public.

“With another increase to SSB, we hope to motivate both more restaurants and people to be more conservative with their sugar usage,” he said in a press conference after the 20th anniversary celebration of the Health Ministry’s training institute here on Tuesday (Sep 10).

The move also joins the ministry's proposed introduction of a nutri-grade system for food and drinks, which will grade a food product with ratings from A to D, depending on a product’s sugar content.

“A grade products contain no sugar or artificial sweeteners, while B grade will contain small amounts of sugar or sweeteners, and so on,” he said.

Currently, almost 3.6 million or one in six adults (15.6%) were diabetic, based on results from the National Health and Morbidity Survey 2023 that was released in May this year.

The same report found that over half a million Malaysians live with four major non-communicable diseases or conditions, namely diabetes, hypertension, high cholesterol, and obesity.