I had debated where to post this – under tax or under health, but tax won even though it hopefully will not raise revenue but nudges consumers to lower junk food consumption.
But also see other posts such as Food for thought on the Revenue Framework on this topic!
The country is one of the first to tax food high in salt and saturated fat to reduce obesity and other diseases. Joe Parkin Daniels reports from Bogotá in the Lancet Published: November 22, 2023DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(23)02628-4.
The new tax was included in a wider reform that passed into law in December, 2022, seeking to reduce the burden of obesity and other diseases on Colombia’s health system, while also bringing in revenue in a country that manages a fiscal deficit. “This isn’t to take your money, it is so that you choose healthier foodstuffs and improve the health of the Colombian people”, Colombian President Gustavo Petro, who oversaw the law’s passage, wrote on X at the beginning of November, when it came into effect. The tax is being implemented gradually, beginning at 10%, before rising to 15% in 2024 and 20% in 2025, and targets foods that are high in salt and saturated fat, as well as industrially manufactured prepackaged foods. Juan Camilo Cárdenas, Professor of Economics at the University of the Andes in Bogotá, said that the measure’s success will be judged on how consumer habits respond to the change in prices. “From an economic perspective the measure is fairly simple: to create incentives to guide consumer behaviour to healthier products, and to guide manufacturers to offer more healthy products”, Cárdenas said. “The ideal goal is that we reach a point where the collections of this tax are minimal because society (both consumers and vendors) has moved to a healthier market.
