Delivering his budget speech, AMA Muhith said a junk food tax would be in addition to current levies.
“I am proposing to impose 10% supplementary duty at local supply stage on fast food in addition to applicable 15% VAT,” he said.
Muhith has been considering such a move since earlier this year when he first mulled the idea of a 14.5% tax on high-fat, sugar and salt junk food while preparing this year’s budget.
“It is a good idea, I never had thought about imposing tax on junk food,” he said at the time, following a parliamentary question by lawmaker Nurjahan Begum. He later pledged to consider which foods should come under the umbrella.
Nurjahan has been arguing that the government needs to find a way to spark a decrease in the consumption of unhealthy foods at a time when their popularity had been soaring.
Speaking to bdnews24, Akku Chowdhury, chief executive of the Bangladesh franchisee of Pizza Hut and KFC, said his restaurants would look at ways to phase in the levy so that their prices do not go up suddenly.
Chowdhury said: “We are a genuine business group. We’ll not do anything that can hurt our consumers. So we’ll try to adopt a policy so that the prices do not go up suddenly."
He added that executives are now looking at ways to cut production costs to offset the new duty.