Not A Solution To Overcome The Increase In Cooking Oil Prices, Observers Liken BLT Like Paracetamol

JAKARTA - Director of the Center of Economic and Law Studies (Celios) Bhima Yudistira said that the provision of direct cash assistance (BLT) for cooking oil does not mean that the rising cooking oil problem can be solved. He likens giving BLT to paracetamol.

"It's like paracetamol it only reduces fever, but the main cause of rising cooking oil prices has yet to be solved," he told VOI, Wednesday, April 6.

Furthermore, according to Bhima, ideally, on the one hand, the government should solve the problem of managing packaged and bulk cooking oil.

"If you give BLT without catching the cooking oil mafia who causes scarcity, it's just useless," he said.

In addition, Bhima said that the provision of cooking oil BLT also needs to pay attention to the accuracy of the recipient's data. According to Bhima, there may be no problem for PKH, because the data is getting better and synchronized with DTKS.

"But for fried food traders, this data collection is very important because it is feared that there will be duplication of recipient data so that it is not right on target," he said.

For example, said Bhima, a fried food vendor with the same owner received twice the BLT allotment. Meanwhile, those who use cooking oil are not only fried food traders, the affected small food and beverage industry must also be considered by the government.

"Most of the micro-businesses are in the food and beverage sector. Can the government cover everything? The problem is that most of the street vendors don't have business licenses registered with the government," he explained.

In addition, said Bhima, fried food vendors tend to move from location to sale, making it difficult to collect data. Thus, the synchronization and accuracy of data owned by local governments, the Ministry of Cooperatives, and MSMEs and data at the association level must run.

"The government can also open a complaint post in each city district to record street vendors who are entitled to BLT but have not yet received their rights," he said.

Not only that, Bhima said the disparity in cooking oil prices in Java and outside Java was too wide. For example, 100 thousand rupiahs per month outside Java, such as in Southeast Sulawesi, can only buy 2 liters packaged cooking oil.

"Even if you are told to buy bulk, queues and supply are limited. BLT cannot be averaged per family to get IDR 100 thousand because the price disparity is different," he said.

As is known, the cooking oil BLT that will be distributed by the Government is IDR 100,000 per month per Beneficiary Family (KPM). BLT will be given in April, May, and June 2022. However, the payment will be made at once to IDR 300 thousand in April 2022.

BLT cooking oil was given to 23 million people. In detail, 20.5 million families are included in the list of recipients of Non-Cash Food Assistance (BPNT) and the Family Hope Program (PKH), as well as 2.5 million street vendors (PKL).