Vietnam sugar industry seeks 20% tax on beverages sweetened with HFCS
The Vietnam Sugarcane and Sugar Association wants beverages containing more than 5 g/100 ml of HFCS to face a 20% excise tax. The proposal seeks to close gaps in Vietnam’s planned sugar-sweetened beverage tax and reduce pressure on domestic cane sugar.
Association seeks broader definition of taxable drinks
The Vietnam Sugarcane and Sugar Association has asked the government to amend Decree 360/2025/ND-CP and clarify which sugar-sweetened beverages will be subject to excise tax. Its proposal would explicitly cover drinks containing free sugars, including high-fructose corn syrup, or HFCS, above 5 g/100 ml.
Vietnam’s amended Special Consumption Tax Law, approved during the ninth session of the 15th National Assembly, adds soft drinks containing more than 5 g of sugar per 100 ml to the tax base from January 1, 2027. The association supports the public-health objective but argues that the implementing decree does not clearly identify the types of sweetener covered.
As VnEconomy reported, the decree refers to total sugar declared on product labels and to national standard TCVN 12828:2019. The association says this approach could omit some HFCS-sweetened products. It instead wants the rules aligned with the World Health Organization’s concept of free sugars, covering added glucose, fructose and sucrose.
HFCS imports reshape sweetener demand
HFCS is a mixture of fructose and glucose sold in formulations containing 42%, 55%, 65% or 90% fructose. HFCS 42% is mainly used in food and confectionery, as well as some beverages, while HFCS 55% is primarily used by the soft-drink industry. According to the association, HFCS 55% is 1.1-1.3 times sweeter than refined cane sugar.
Customs data cited by the association show Vietnamese HFCS imports rising from 102,372 tonnes in 2021 to 184,975 tonnes in 2022, 231,904 tonnes in 2023 and 241,504 tonnes in 2024. Imports eased to 229,588 tonnes in 2025, but remained more than twice the 2021 volume. The association describes the five-year increase as 226%.
The association says imported HFCS is used mainly in confectionery and soft drinks, where beverage manufacturers increasingly substitute it for cane sugar. Over the past two years, low-priced HFCS captured beverage-industry demand equivalent to about 300,000 tonnes of cane sugar. This has reduced the market available to domestic mills and could affect hundreds of thousands of sugarcane-farming households.
Price pressure drives call for differentiated tax
Vietnamese sugar traded at 16,505-18,616 dong per kg between January and August 2026, according to figures presented by the association. That was about 68% of the reported regional average of 24,879 dong per kg across producers including the Philippines, Indonesia and China. The price gap persisted even though Vietnam recorded sugar productivity of 6.69 tonnes per hectare in the 2024/25 season, the highest among the main producing countries compared by the association: Thailand, Indonesia and the Philippines.
The association proposes a 20% excise rate for beverages using HFCS and asks the government to submit a differentiated sweetener-tax mechanism to the National Assembly. It cites the Philippines, where it says HFCS-sweetened beverages face twice the rate applied to drinks using conventional sugar, and Indonesia’s trade-remedy measures on HFCS. If adopted, the Vietnamese proposal could raise costs for beverage producers using imported syrup, support demand for alternative sweeteners and strengthen the competitive position of domestic cane sugar. The final effect would depend on the tax base, implementation rules and whether manufacturers reformulate their products or pass the added cost to consumers.
