Govt opts to go green, slaps duty on polythene

FT ONLINE

What is nice to hear is that Finance Minister Muhith has opted to go green and discourage people from using polythene products and poly-packaging.

To encourage the use of green product jute, a 5 per cent supplementary duty has been proposed on all polythene bags, plastic bags and poly-packaging in the budget for fiscal 2018-19.

Of course, this comes at the final budget before the upcoming general elections, which is generally aimed towards the purpose of gaining popularity. But, nevertheless, this move will garner plenty of appreciation from environmentalists.

However, this might mean that we can be seeing a price hike in food and other products that use poly-packaging – starting from milk, mineral water, and other food items to a lot of things that we use in daily life.

Also, poly bags are a common use in everyday shopping. People use them to carry vegetables, meat and fish from the kitchen markets. One notable improvement in the past was the forceful implementation of paper packaging at shopping malls.But, now, exactly how much the imposed duty will trickle down to the consumer level is yet to be determined.