The Centre for the Promotion of Private Enterprise (CPPE) has warned that renewed calls for a sugar tax on non-alcoholic beverages could hurt Nigeria’s manufacturing sector, threaten jobs and slow the country’s fragile economic recovery.
In a statement, CEO, CPPE, Muda Yusuf, said while public health concerns such as diabetes and cardiovascular diseases deserve attention, imposing an additional sugar-specific tax was economically risky and poorly suited to Nigeria’s current realities of high inflation, weak consumer purchasing power and rising production costs.
CPPE argued that proposals for sugar taxation in Nigeria are often influenced by global policy templates that do not adequately reflect local conditions.
“The proposition of a sugar-specific tax is misplaced, economically risky, and weakly supported by empirical evidence, especially when viewed against Nigeria’s prevailing structural and macroeconomic realities,” he said. Yusuf stressed that the food and beverage sector remains the backbone of Nigeria’s manufacturing industry, adding that the industry supports millions of livelihoods across farming, processing, packaging, logistics, wholesale and retail trade, and hospitality.
Any policy that weakens this ecosystem, he said, could have far-reaching consequences, including job losses, lower household incomes and reduced investment.
According to him, manufacturers in the non-alcoholic beverage segment are already facing heavy fiscal and cost pressures.
“Existing obligations include company income tax, value-added tax, excise duties, levies on profits and imports, and multiple state and local government charges. These are compounded by high energy costs, exchange-rate volatility, elevated interest rates and expensive logistics,” he noted.
The CPPE boss noted that retail prices of many non-alcoholic beverages have risen by about 50 per cent over the past two years, even without the introduction of new taxes, further squeezing consumers.
Yusuf also questioned the effectiveness of sugar taxes in addressing the root causes of non-communicable diseases in Nigeria.
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