The Jakarta Post
The Indonesian government plans to halve the imports of industrial-use plastics in the next five years by encouraging more investors to enter the plastic manufacturing industry in the country.The increase in local plastic production would also help improve the country’s manufacturing capability and reduce imports. Indonesia imported a staggering US$20 billion worth of plastic as intermediary goods and manufacturing ingredients in 2018, 10.6 percent of Indonesia’s overall exports, the Industry Ministry’s director general for the chemical, textile and miscellaneous industries, Achmad Sigit Dwiwahjono, said at a manufacturing exhibition on Tuesday last week.In the same year, the domestic plastic industry grew by a modest 6.9 percent, even though it was far better than the 2.47 percent growth recorded in 2017. It also contributed Rp 92.6 trillion ($6.6 billion) to GDP, a much smaller f...