“A Good Budget For Manufacturers” Says BPF
Thursday, 20 March 2014
The Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne MP gave his Budget statement today.
Peter Davis Director-General of the BPF said “this is a good budget for manufacturing. In the BPF led Seven Associations letter to the Chancellor in February we asked him to extend the £250k tax free allowance to upgrade equipment and expand production. In fact he has doubled it to £500k until December 2015. This will boost investment and productivity in the Plastics industry”.
Peter Davis also welcomed The Chancellor’s doubling of UK Export Finance’s direct lending programme to £3bn and to be more proactive in stimulating export. “This will greatly help SME’s particularly to start exporting. Our Trade Deficit in Goods was £106bn in 2012. We must reverse that”.
Peter Davis welcomed the £30 million funding for a Graphene Innovation Centre “Plastics will be crucial to graphene’s success” also the extra £85 million for Apprenticeships Grants for employers. “We expect the Plastics Industry to directly benefit from this at a time when it is being hit by a growing skills shortage”.
Peter Davis commenting on the Chancellor, as widely expected, capping the Carbon Price Support Rate from 2016-17 to 2019-20 said “capping the rate and extending the compensation scheme for energy intensive industries such as chemicals should benefit the plastics industry in stabile or lower prices for the raw materials and additives they purchase”.
Finally on the Chancellor’s plans to introduce a new £1 coin because the current one is widely counterfeited. Peter Davis said “why not a plastics £1 coin in which far more anti-counterfeiting devices are possible as is the case with plastic bank notes”.
ENDS
For all media enquiries, BPF logos and images please contact Laura Hindley, Communications and Industrial Issues Executive on [email protected] or 0207 457 5043.
Notes for editors:
1. The British Plastics Federation (BPF) is the UK trade association for the plastics industry - representing the whole supply chain including polymer producers, distributors, additives suppliers, machinery manufacturers, processors and recyclers.
