Friday in the House of Assembly, the Minister of Home Affairs was unable to give definitive answers to questions I posed in relation to timelines on consultation on cost of living eventually saying that at the end of the year a cost of living report may be ready. That is nine months from now.
That is a considerable about of time and shows that other than more talk there is no real plan. Meanwhile, price controls on unregulated entities like grocery stores may still be the end result which has been shown to fail around the world. We continue to recommend scrapping the sugar tax which remains one of the single biggest failures of government policy.
The World Health Organization laid out seven items that needed to be in place for a sugar tax to be successful, namely
1. Retail prices on sugar drinks would need to be raised by 20 per cent or more.
2. Subsidies for fresh fruit and vegetables would need to be between 10 per cent and
30 per cent.
3. Taxing “other foods and beverages high in sugar, salt and fat” up to 50 per cent
would help to reduce obesity.
4. Earmarking revenues raised from the sugar tax for healthcare.
5. Proper monitoring and evaluation to measure the effect of the sugar tax.
6. Requiring warning labels on taxed products as an education strategy.
7. Drafting a multidisciplinary policy and implementation plan that includes advocacy
for political buy-in, monitoring and evaluation is critical.
None of this has happened and many food costs remain high. The fact is the Government can do something immediately to lower costs and chooses not to.
Municipalities Bill
Friday the House passed legislation to postpone the municipal elections for the Corporations of St George’s and Hamilton. I spoke against this proposal. This is the third time that elections have been postponed by this Government. First from 2018 to 2019 and then again from 2022 to 2023 and now from 2025 to 2026.
Members of the corporations are elected for definitive terms and postponements are undemocratic. The reasoning given was that a Privy Council ruling is coming so we need to wait, but what was telling is the Minister did not confirm if elections will in fact be held in 2026 so we need to watch this space carefully.
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