Price Stabilization Efforts, Trade Minister Distributes 4 Million Liters Of Cooking Oil Through Market Operations

JAKARTA - Trade Minister Muhammad Lutfi said that currently the government is still conducting market operations to suppress the price of cooking oil in the market. One of them is the program of 11 million liters of packaged cooking oil in 47 thousand modern market outlets. The realization of the program has reached 4 million liters. "So 7 million liters are still on going. Today afternoon we have a meeting for plain up," he said in a virtual press conference, Wednesday, January 5. Lutfi said his party would involve 70 cooking oil and cooking oil industries. 225 packaging companies. In the initial stage, the government will first cooperate with five companies. "For the first stage, we will ask the five big (industries) to immediately allocate for simple packaged cooking oil so that it can run. Hopefully by the end of this week it will start (production). " he said.

Furthermore, Lutfi targets the distribution of cooking oil to be able to reach all markets monitored by the Ministry of Trade by the end of next week. It is safe because the form of distribution of this cooking oil is simple packaged cooking oil," he said. Lufti hopes that the presence of a market operation scheme and a simple packaged cooking oil subsidy will not necessarily eliminate premium cooking oil on the market. "At the same time, don't let this packaged cooking oil also into all simple and no premium packaging. So we turn off all these goods, an equilibrium occurs even though the simple packaging is still affordable by the wider community," he said. The program, which was launched in November 2021, is expected to be distributed until January 2022 in modern retail. The Chairperson of the Indonesian Retail Entrepreneurs Association (Aprindo) Roy Nicholas Mandey said that the simple packaged cooking oil program at low prices will be available until January 2022 at modern retailers. "Currently it continues and we hope the target is until the first or second week of January this program has been completed," he said in a virtual press conference, Wednesday, December 22, 2021. Furthermore, Roy explained that the supply of simple packaged cooking oil was carried out. gradually because cooking oil producers also ask for sufficient time to carry out production to distribution of products to retail stores. "We continue to process. Why not directly? Because the production process itself or making simple packaging has processing time, then there is logistics time. , delivery of goods, especially in areas," he said. Not only that, According to Roy, the supply of simple packaged cooking oil will be carried out in stages to ensure stock availability until early next year. "Because after the new year there are still some people who are resting and so on, who still need cooking oil," he said.