Sweet policies that make no sense
THE Galen Centre for Health and Social Policy joins Deputy Health Minister Datuk Lukanisman Awang Sauni’s recent call for increased attention and commitment to prevent and reduce the spread of diabetes in Malaysia. As such, the Galen Centre calls for removal of sugar as a gazetted item under the Price Control and Anti-profiteering Act to bolster preventive health efforts and harmonise policies which directly impact the well-being of Malaysians.
Malaysia currently has one of the lowest sugar prices in the world. They are lower than those in sugar-producing countries such as Indonesia, Thailand and the Philippines. This has a direct implication for the continued and uncontrolled spread of diabetes in this country, causing cardio-renal-metabolic diseases such as chronic kidney disease and cardiovascular disease, which bring about premature death.
Malaysians’ well-known love for food, combined with a largely sedentary lifestyle, is extremely harmful: It is estimated that seven million Malaysian adults, aged 18 and above, will be living with diabetes by 2025. The rate of diabetes is among the highest in the world.
Childhood diabetes is also on the rise. A third of children are overweight or obese; obese children have approximately four times greater risk of developing Type 2 diabetes than those with a normal weight.
Price controls on sugar are a key enabling factor of excessive sugar consumption in our food. Artificially cheap sugar is driving higher sugar uptake.
Sugar prices in Malaysia are currently capped at RM2.85 per kilo for coarse sugar and RM2.95 per kilo for refined sugar. But the operational cost to produce retail sugar is around RM3.85.
As a result of price controls and despite the fact that sugar subsidies were abolished in October 2013, the government has been forced to provide incentive payments – or more accurately, subsidies – to sugar manufacturers since November 2023 to the tune of RM1 per kilo of sugar for raw sugar and refined sugar, which translates to around Rm42mil monthly and between Rm500mil and Rm600mil yearly. This should not have happened.
Malaysia must be one of a few countries in the world that places price controls on sugar and then provides subsidies or incentives to sugar manufacturers to help recover their costs, enough to make significant profits. It must be the only country in the world that does this, while at the same time imposing a sugar-sweetened beverages tax. The policies do not make sense, are dysfunctional, and harm Malaysians. They need to be changed.
“Obese children have pproximately four times greater risk of developing Type 2 diabetes.”
AZRUL MOHD KHALIB Founder & chief executive officer Galen Centre for Health and Social Policy
The Galen Centre is an independent public policy research and advocacy organisation focused on health and social issues.