Bill Introduced in Colombia to Eliminate Tax on Ultra-Processed and Dugary Products
Representatives to the House Daniel Briceño (Democratic Center) and Carol Borda (National Salvation) launched a campaign to eliminate the so-called healthy tax in Colombia, which applies to sugary beverages and certain ultra-processed foods, with rates that gradually increase.
The two congress members explained that after several years of applying this tax (it began in November 2023), it would not have succeeded in changing consumption habits as expected. The declared purpose was to discourage the consumption of products associated with chronic diseases and help ease the pressure on the health system.
On the contrary, Briceño and Borda maintain, the tax created through Article 54 of Law 2277 of 2022 would have generated economic pressure on small commercial establishments that sell the taxed products.
Tax would not have produced expected health result
Among the ultra-processed foods covered by the tax are cereals, cookies, sausages, ham, chorizo, powdered milk and other foods in the basic household basket. Briceño questioned the breadth of the tax and said that a significant portion of the products consumed by Colombian households ended up being taxed.
He also maintained that the argument of protecting health through higher taxes would not have produced the expected result. “I do not believe that by raising people’s taxes, people will start taking better care of themselves,” he said on Instagram when explaining why he considers it necessary to eliminate it.
For the two congress members, the problem is not in discussing the health of Colombians, but in the tool used to try to modify their consumption decisions. Borda argued that people’s autonomy should be strengthened and questioned whether the State should intervene through taxes to determine what foods citizens should consume.
One of the main arguments of the authors of the bill is related to the effect of the tax on smaller commercial establishments.
Borda said that the tax generated an economic impact on 67% of establishments and warned that there is a risk of closure for some of these businesses. She insisted that the impact would not be concentrated on large business owners. “It is not the very wealthy, the four thousand richest. We are talking about the baker, the shopkeeper who sells these products and who are part of the basic household basket,” she argued.
A survey by the National Federation of Merchants (FENALCO) published in 2025 found that 66.8% of shopkeepers reported a direct impact on their sales and that nearly 30% came to consider closing during 2024. Fenaltiendas had projected a minimum 8% decline in annual revenues.
Merchants support the bill
The underlying argument of Briceño and Borda is that the increase in prices of taxed products would not necessarily be reducing their consumption. For Briceño, the result would have been to transfer part of the economic pressure onto businesses that depend on these sales and onto consumers who purchase products from the basic household basket.
The authors of the bill seeking to eliminate the healthy tax believe that the State should seek other ways to promote better eating habits without transferring the economic burden to small merchants or using new taxes as the main mechanism of intervention. “The State does not need more taxes, what it needs is savings and to stop the waste,” Briceño said.
Regarding this, FENALCO expressed its support for the bill. The president of that business association, Jaime Alberto Cabal, said that it is a necessary measure to protect shopkeepers across the country, ease the burden that these taxes represent for their businesses and reduce the pressure on prices paid by consumers.
“We value the fact that this proposal has been taken up and has now become a bill,” Cabal said, quoted in a statement from the federation. “At FENALCO we have insisted that these taxes, created during the Petro government, are directly affecting neighborhood stores, which mostly serve families in socioeconomic strata 1, 2 and 3, and which today face strong pressure on their sales, margins and costs. In the end, these higher prices are passed on to the consumer and hurt their purchasing power.”
FENALCO calculations using DANE figures showed that the application of the tax drove up the prices of these products, since while food inflation closed 2025 at 5.07%, the category of ‘other bakery products’ accelerated to 10.7%.
“Without a doubt, these taxes on food have had the painful consequence of affecting a large part of the products sold in stores and eroding the purchasing power of lower-income families and, of course, seriously endangering the financial stability of shopkeepers,” Cabal explained.