WORLDWIDE, governments are imposing taxes on sugary drinks tax designed to reduce consumption of drinks with added sugar.
In many countries, beverage producers like Coca-Cola often lock horns with national medical associations and the World Health Organization that promote the tax to discourage unhealthy diets and offset the growing economic costs of obesity.
“According to the Department of Health, one of the leading causes of death or illness in the Philippines is diabetes. It’s a growing disease and it’s very expensive for Filipinos, especially from the lower sector, to maintain,” Paola Alvarez, spokesperson of the Department of Finance.
The global debate is how to protect the health of citizens from junk food, including unhealthy drinks.
In Negros Occidental, the strong opposition to the proposed excise tax on sugar sweetened beverages centers on protecting the sugar industry. There’s nothing on protecting the health of consumers.
Recently, Representatives Suansings filed a House bill increasing the excise tax on sugar sweetened drinks, including high fructose corn syrup.
Under their proposal, which seeks a P10 per liter excise tax on sugar sweetened beverages, 20 percent of the fund will go to Sugarcane Industry Development Act (Sida) while the 80 percent will be allocated to the General Fund.
Sida emphasizes enhancing the competitiveness of the sugarcane industry, seeks to maximize the utilization of sugarcane resources, and aims to improve the incomes of farmers and farm workers through improved productivity, product diversification, job generation, and increased efficiency of sugar mills.
And yet, all the local protestations are how to make the sugar – and not the sugarcane industry – thrive.
Where are the moves of the industry to develop sugarcane juice? This health drink contains alkaline in nature because of the high concentration of calcium, magnesium, potassium, iron, and manganese, which helps prevent diseases like cancer that cannot survive in an alkaline environment. Thus it helps in fighting various types of cancer such as prostate and breast cancer.
Talk about paradigm shifts, from junk food to health drinks!
Or the bioplastics subsector that could propel the modern industrialization of the province. Industry leaders could even partner with that archvillain demonized in the province: The Coca-Cola Company.
In 2009, the company, according to the SugarCane.org noted that PlantBottle is a bioplastic made with Brazilian sugarcane the company billed as containing up to 30 percent plant material and being 100 percent recyclable. Since then, Coca-Cola has shipped more than 2.5 billion beverages worldwide using PlantBottle packaging
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Calling Governors Alfredo Marañon Jr and Lito Coscolluela to put the debates back on the road to the green economy.
r(bqanc@yahoo.com)