88th IBHA Annual General Meeting
“Dear IBHA Members,
I extend a warm welcome to you and thank you for participating in the 88th Annual General Meeting of your Industry Association – IBHA.
I would like to highlight some key information about our Market and Industry:
Our Industry size for the year 2021 was estimated to be 100,000 Crores (12 billion USD) with a growth of 9% over the previous year, more or less in line with India’s GDP growth of 8.7% versus 2020. However, 2022-23 Q1 (April-June) growth for our Industry has been estimated to be between 18-20% far ahead of GDP Q1 growth of 13.5 %. If we look at certain sectors like e-commerce, then some have posted a tremendous Q1 growth of 42%! This augurs well for the full year 2022 and we can estimate our annual 2022 growth to be a very high 12%, of course thanks to a low base effect in 2021-22, due to Covid. Going forward, I feel very confident in a robust annual growth of our Industry to be in the region of 8-9 % in the coming years.
Indian Regulatory context and a renewed vision for IBHA:
We are currently facing increasingly burdensome regulations on the labelling and advertising front emanating from inherently good intentions on consumer protection but not translating into pragmatic proposals. Moreover, they are going in the reverse direction of ease of business and can potentially stifle the growth of our industry.
There is also an ongoing challenge on resetting MOEF targets and calendar for increasing percentage of recyclable packaging usage to better reflect the current technical capabilities of our supplier partners to provide this without compromising quality and safety.
In the face of this, IBHA needs to firstly reinforce its credibility as a strong voice for the long-term health of the economy and the society by showcasing not only its size and scale but also its soft power in the modern economy – example women’s employment and women empowerment.
Secondly, we need to be considered as an equal partner by the regulators by demonstrating our fair and ethical nature married to our deep scientific, regulatory expertise and consumer insights, all these going towards the same goal of consumer protection that they are seeking, but in a positive and sustainable manner.
A stronger and fresher digital communications strategy is being planned that will be one of the many initiatives to tackle our above challenges.
Now moving onto IBHA’s major activities for the year gone by:
As highlighted above, IBHA has been very active with the department of legal metrology on labelling text issues especially, to do with unit selling price for packs and recently the potential requirement to write the main ingredients on front of pack, secondly with the CCPA on misleading advertisement guidelines, their enforcement and finally the penalties for non-compliance.
IBHA is also very active with Ministry of Health to counter the current draft of the Bill that seems to ignore the separate rules for Cosmetics and once again merge Cosmetics with Drugs and press for an alignment of the same so that the Bill also reflects a separate Act for Cosmetics.
Conclusion:
In conclusion I wish to thank my fellow office bearers, the executive committee members , the technical, the legal, the anti-counterfeit, Ayush, the plastics waste management committee members and of course our Secretary-General , for your passion towards IBHA , your time and your contribution .
Thank you!”
