Nigeria, Jan. 22 -- The Centre for the Promotion of Private Enterprise (CPPE) has warned that renewed calls for a sugar tax on non-alcoholic beverages could hurt Nigeria's manufacturing sector, threaten jobs and slow the country's fragile economic recovery.

In a statement on Wednesday, signed by its CEO, Muda Yusuf, the private sector advocacy group said while public health concerns such as diabetes and cardiovascular diseases deserve attention, imposing an additional sugar-specific tax was economically risky and poorly suited to Nigeria's current realities of high inflation, weak consumer purchasing power and rising production costs.

CPPE argued that proposals for sugar taxation in Nigeria are often influenced by global policy template...