THE House of Representatives is keen to pass a bill imposing additional tax on soft drinks and other sweetened beverages next month.
House Speaker Feliciano Belmonte Jr. said House Bill 3365, the Palace-backed measure seeking to increase the cost of softdrinks and other sugar sweetened beverages (SSB), is expected to be passed before Congress takes a Christmas break on December 16.
The national government is expected to earn an additional P34.5 billion in revenues if the bill becomes a law.
Belmonte said the bill may not get the nod of senators due to time constraints since campaign season will start in February 2016.
Under the bill, additional taxes on SSBs will be used to help address the rising obesity and diabetes incidents in the country.
Negros Occidental Representative Albee Benitez, who opposed the proposal, said sugar is not the culprit in the rising obesity and diabetes cases in the country's problems of rice-eating Filipinos.
Sugar industry leaders expressed fears that the new tax will trigger an increase in prices of softdrinks and carbonated drinks and will result in the "contraction of the market of refined sugar," which could result to reduction of purchases of refined sugar.
Benitez added that it will be the Filipino consumers and sugar workers who will suffer the impact of high prices of SSB’s.
The bill imposes an excise tax on sugar-sweetened beverages by inserting a new Section 150-A in the National Internal Revenue Code of 1997, as amended.
The new Section 150-A titled Sugar Sweetened Beverages provides there shall be levied, assessed and collected on sugar-sweetened beverages per liter of volume capacity, an excise tax of P10. The rate of tax imposed under this section shall be increased by four percent every year thereafter effective on January 1, 2017 through Revenue Regulations issued by the Secretary of Finance.
The bill defines sugar-sweetened beverage (SSB) as "a non-alcoholic beverage that contains caloric sweeteners/added sugar or artificial/non-caloric sweetener. It may be in liquid or solid mixture, syrup or concentrates that are added to water or other liquids to make a drink." (Sunnex)