Apindo Boss Regarding Excise Application To Sweetened Drinks: People's Purchasing Power Can Drop

Illustration (Photo: Doc Antara)

JAKARTA - Chairman of the Indonesian Employers' Association (Apindo) Shinta W Kamdani revealed that the plan to levy excise on sweetened drinks will have an impact on business actors, including in terms of manpower.

"If excise duty increases, the price will also increase, people's purchasing power can decrease and when demand goes down it can have an impact on production. And if it is prolonged, it will also have an impact on demand for production and labor reduction," said Shinta, quoted by ANTARA, Friday, August 23.

He added that his party had held an audience with the Ministry of Health regarding the plan to levy excise on sweetened drinks.

"Actually, we have an audience with the Minister of Health (Menkes) Budi Gunadi Sadikin, and we have also submitted our inputs," said Shinta.

He hopes that the discussion of the derivative rules regarding the excise levy plan can involve Apindo so that consultation and coordination can run by involving various aspects.

This is because food and sweet drinks support 39 percent of non-oil and gas industry GDP and contribute 6.55 percent of national GDP.

"So determining the limits of sugar, salt, fat (GGL) in processed food production alone does not evenly reduce the number of diseases caused by high sugar," he added.

His party also understands the plan to apply this excise levy in terms of health, and responds by preparing data related to whether the application of food and beverage excise levies will affect the decline in GGL consumption rates.

The imposition of excise duty on processed foods is contained in Article 194 of Government Regulation (PP) No. 28/2024 concerning Implementing Regulations of Law No. 17/2023 concerning Health.

The government has also determined the maximum limit for sugar, salt, and fat content in processed foods, including ready-to-eat processed foods, this is an effort by the government to control the risk of non-communicable diseases (PTM).

In the regulation, the government considers risk studies and international standards to provide an overview of the magnitude and level of risk of the emergence of non-communicable diseases due to eating foods that contain sugar, salt, and fat.