Cooking Oil Debt Has Not Been Paid, Ministry Of Trade Will Meet Entrepreneurs Next Week

JAKARTA - The Ministry of Trade (Kemendag) will schedule a meeting with the Indonesian Retail Entrepreneurs Association (Aprindo). The meeting is to discuss the debt or raffaction of cooking oil amounting to IDR 344 billion that has not been paid.

For your information, this Rp344 billion debt is the difference promised by the Ministry of Trade to be paid to retail entrepreneurs for the one-price cooking oil policy in 2022.

The Director General of Domestic Trade at the Ministry of Trade, Isy Karim, said that the meeting was planned to be held at the beginning of next week.

"We will formally invite Aprindo to discuss with us to discuss it," he said in a virtual press conference, Thursday, April 27.

Isy revealed why the payment of the one-price cooking oil policy was late to be paid to entrepreneurs. The reason is because there are obstacles related to settlements in independent auctions and surveyors.

"The completion of this independent Surveyor exceeds the deadline. So that at that time there was a failed auction because the appointment of the surveyor had to go through an auction, it could not be directly appointed. The auction process failed at that time so it was rescheduled," he explained.

However, continued Isy, not long after that there was a government decision to revoke Permendag Number 3 of 2022 concerning January 18, 2022. As a result of the withdrawal of the regulation, the government has concerns about the legal aspect.

Therefore, the Ministry of Trade is currently still waiting for legal opinion from the Attorney General's Office regarding the payment of the debt.

"We are still coordinating further with AGO friends because some data is still needed by the AGO from the requested request, there are several things we need to convey," said Isy.