PDGN Vice-President and member of the Moroccan House of Representatives, Dr Mostafa Brahimi, attended the Regional Expert Meeting on Policy Action for Healthy Diets in Dubai, where he shared his country’s experience of soda (SSB) taxes.
As a member of the Moroccan Obesity Task Force, he explained how Morocco implemented a sugar tax and the Nutri-Score front-of-pack labelling scheme in order to lower the sugar content of processed food products in the country.
CAPTION: Delegates at the Regional Expert Meeting on Policy Action for Healthy Diets in Dubai.
The plans to introduce an SSB tax faced stiff opposition from the agri-food sector lobby. Advocacy efforts took over two years with different political parties in the Parliament and the creation of an all-Party Moroccan Obesity Task Force.
The Task Force worked hard raising issues in Parliament under slogan: “The health of our children is not negotiable”. Having evidence specific to Morocco was another important aid to advocacy.
The SSB tax was finally adopted by the Moroccan parliament in the 2019 finance bill and amended in 2020 and again in 2023. Morocco now has an SSB that is progressive according to the levels of sugar and extends to biscuits, dairy products and derivatives.
Monitoring arrangements have been established, through a planned national survey on nutrition status, a consumer survey, the mid-term review in 2025 of progress towards the SDGs and two university PhD research projects to analyse the sugar levels in high-sugar processed foods on the market between 2022 and 2025 and assess their consumption across the life-course in Morocco.
The food industry has started to reduce the sugar content in certain processed foods and consumers are better informed about the harmful effects of overconsumption of sugars.
Advocacy Action: Could the Moroccan experience be replicated in your country? Have you been through a similar process you could share with others?