The tax on sugar-sweetened beverages is not a silver bullet but it could cut the health bill and add to government coffers.

With government finances under massive strain, an additional R7-billion a year would be pretty sweet.

Sweet is the operative word here – this is a preliminary estimate of what a 20% tax on sugar-sweetened beverages could potentially bring in if the state developed a taste for the idea.

This is according to Priceless SA (Priority Cost-Effective Lessons for Systems Strengthening South Africa), a research institute at the University of the Witwatersrand’s school of public health.

But more valuable than the extra revenue are the potential benefits of reducing obesity and related diseases such as diabetes, which are extremely costly for the country’s economy, according to Aviva Tugendhaft, the deputy director of the institute.

South Africa is fast becoming a fat nation and, according to a 2015 research paper by Tugendhaft and others, inaction over the growing intake of sugary drinks could lead to the rise of an additional 1.2-million obese South Africans by 2017.

In the paper, titled Cost of Inaction on Sugar-Sweetened Beverage Consumption: Implications for Obesity in South Africa, the authors calculate that the increased consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages by just 2.4% – the rate at which the sales of sugary drinks are calculated to rise annually – could result in this dramatic spike in obesity.