There Is A Policy Of HET To DMO-DPO, The Ombudsman Is Confused That Cooking Oil Is Even More Expensive And Rare

JAKARTA - The government through the Ministry of Trade (Kemendag) has issued a number of policies to reduce the spike in cooking oil prices in the January-February 2022 period. Starting from the highest retail price (HET) to the domestic market obligation (DMO) and domestic price obligation (DPO) policies. .

Then, has the policy succeeded in overcoming the scarcity and high price of cooking oil?

The Indonesian Ombudsman also monitors a number of markets and retails, both modern and traditional throughout Indonesia to see the results of the policies issued by the Ministry of Trade. There are at least 274 monitoring locations.

From the results of this monitoring, Member of the Indonesian Ombudsman Yeka Hendra Fatika explained that the issue of cooking oil has now shifted. It is not only a matter of being expensive, but also spreading to the scarcity of these staples.

"The previous month (January-February) migraine was available but the price was high, in any market it was available, there was no shortage but it was expensive," he said, in a virtual press conference quoted on Wednesday, March 16.

Yeka also considered this to be ironic. Because, on the other hand, the government has provided a number of incentives to business actors to sell cheap cooking oil to the public. However, the facts on the ground show that the price is still expensive, even the goods are scarce.

"Now this migration issue has changed from being expensive to rare and still expensive," said Yeka.

Ombudsman suspects cause of shortage due to DMO policy

According to Yeka, based on the monitoring of the Indonesian Ombudsman, the alleged cause of the scarcity lies in the DMO policy issued by the government.

"Based on the results of monitoring by the Indonesian Ombudsman, the alleged cause of the scarcity of cooking oil is the difference between the reported DMO data and its realization. The DMO policy is not followed by bringing together exporters of CPO or its processed products with producers of cooking oil," he said.

According to Yeka, there is no guarantee of the availability of cooking oil, especially in the face of fasting and Eid al-Fitr, creating a panic buying phenomenon in the community.

Therefore, the Ombudsman of the Republic of Indonesia also highlighted the failure of the supervisory function of the implementation of government policies in controlling domestic cooking oil prices.

"The supervisory function will be difficult to carry out if price disparities persist. Instead of facilitating the availability of cooking oil, cooking oil stocks are scarce. The Indonesian Ombudsman has asked the government to evaluate policies regarding HET, DMO and DPO," he said.