It is believed that the plastic packaging business will continue to grow throughout 2022. Entering the beginning of this year, the downstream plastic industry has increased by around 85 percent. "The condition of this plastic packaging has started to improve, domestic demand is close to recovering before the pandemic. But the downstream industry is quite good, approaching 85 percent," said Secretary-General of the Association for the Aromatic Olefins and Plastics Industry (Inaplas) Fajar Budiono to Kontan.co.id, Sunday (28/2). This condition is caused by imported finished goods experiencing problems due to logistical disruptions due to the global scarcity of containers. So that domestic demand can be filled by local supply, and make the downstream industry increase by up to 85%. In addition, Fajar said, previously the use of tertiary packaging was dominated by health goods. But now, it has begun to be dominated by the agricultural sector and infrastructure has begun to increase. According to him, this has shown an improvement in line with the economic recovery. Even now, the demand for packaged products from other sectors such as food and beverages to packaging is also increasing because they are used for packaging online shopping packages. "The online delivery trend is increasing, even increasing from mid-2020 to early 2022, so the need for packaging is also high," explained Fajar.
Meanwhile, currently, the average utility of packaging factories in the upstream sector is around 95%. Fajar is optimistic that the utility of packaging factories will remain at a high level considering that packaging demand will continue to increase as we enter the moment of Ramadan and Eid. Although it is believed that the plastic packaging business will continue to grow, Fajar does not agree if the government rushes to apply excise taxes on plastics and sweetened drinks. This is because the momentum for economic recovery, which is currently improving, will be disrupted by the implementation of the new excise tax. For information, the government is still evaluating to increase the number of excisable goods, such as the imposition of excise on plastics and sweetened drinks. The addition of this number will depend on the evaluation of the economic recovery in the first semester of 2021. Considering that at the beginning of the year the Covid-19 pandemic spiked again due to the Omicron variant. "Don't let the plastic industry start to improve and the economic recovery also starts to improve, but it will be disrupted by the implementation of this new excise tax. The government has to make choices, even though our commodity prices are at their best,” said Fajar. With that, Fajar requested that the government consider other sources of revenue, apart from excise, as well as continue to boost economic recovery so that people's purchasing power begins to recover and increase again.
