Selling Cooking Oil Above HET, 10 Thousand Online Sellers Takedown

JAKARTA - The Director General of Domestic Trade of the Ministry of Trade (Kemendag), Oke Nurwan, said that his party continues to search for a number of online traders in the marketplace who sell cooking oil above the highest retail price (HET) set by the government.

Until now, there have been at least 10 thousand sellers who have been proven to sell at prices above HET and their trades have been taken down. Oke admitted that he did not know where the sellers got the cooking oil supply, so they sold it at a high price.

As is known, the Ministry of Trade has set the HET for cooking oil starting February 1, 2022 at Rp11,500 for bulk cooking oil, Rp13,500 per liter for simple packaged cooking oil and Rp14,000 per liter for premium packaged cooking oil.

"We have reprimanded the marketplace for taking them down and more than 10 thousand have been taken down," said Oke, in a virtual discussion, Tuesday, March 8.

Furthermore, Oke said that traders in the marketplace who sold cooking oil above the HET provisions were found in Tokopedia, Shopee and Bukalapak. With the warning from the Ministry of Trade, a number of marketplaces are said to have carried out a takedown.

"We will still enforce the (takedown rule)," said Oke.

Cooking oil is not rare

On the same occasion, Oke also denied a number of speculations circulating in the community which considered that there was currently a shortage of cooking oil in the market. Oke stressed that the current supply of cooking oil is still safe and available. "This cooking oil is not rare. It is available. The only problem that is demanded by the community is which one is Rp. 14,000, which is Rp. 13,000, which is Rp. 11,500," said Okay.

There is no need to queue, according to Oke, people can still get cooking oil on the e-commerce platform. However, he admitted, the supply of cooking oil is available at a fairly high price.

"If the price is high, there will be a lot of (cooking oil). In any market (cooking oil) there will be high prices. Even if you don't want to go anywhere, there are high prices online too," said Oke.

Oke said that the policy of determining HET by the Minister of Trade, Muhammad Lutfi, had an impact on the cooking oil distribution system in the field. He emphasized that currently the cooking oil distributed in the market is cooking oil at low prices.

Furthermore, Oke said, the HET for cooking oil should have been in effect in line with the stock of cooking oil that was easily available to the public.

"In principle, cooking oil, currently categorized as cooking oil, should be cheap cooking oil. But there are those who play around with this, both from the flow and from the price," said Okay.