Tom Lembong's Attorney: Sugar Imports In 2015 Are Proven Effective, Why Is It Only Now A Problem?

JAKARTA - Tom Lembong's attorney, Zaid Mushafi, responded to the current government's decision to import as much as 200,000 tons of crude sugar. He considered the current situation the same when Tom as Minister of Trade in 2015 gave a policy of importing sugar.

According to him, the import policy at that time was also carried out with the main aim of stabilizing sugar prices in the midst of a higher price situation compared to the current conditions.

"Well, this import policy was taken by means of the mechanism for importing raw crystal sugar and processing it into white crystal sugar here, it has taken into account the situation and conditions that occurred at that time," said Zaid in his statement, Tuesday, March 11.

The policy of importing raw crystal sugar and changing it to GKP and distributing it to the community was the right solution at that time, and managed to overcome problems in rising sugar prices.

He regretted that the problems that arose had actually occurred recently, namely when there was accusations of an inappropriate bureaucracy, even though such technical matters could be corrected when an error occurred, although in the end there was no improvement.

"All the letters, yes, all correspondences and permits, import approvals, not import permits, import approvals issued by Mr. Tom Lembong were copied to all relevant ministries, what does that mean? If there are things that are not true, or there are things that are odd, of course at that time the permits for approvals were denied by each ministry, or not approved by each ministry, why after 9 years it seems as if this was a problem, even though at that time there was no problem," said Zaid.

Indonesia itself has never had a sugar surplus, especially if the way to calculate it is every two or three months, it is not the right thing to calculate a surplus because ideal simulations meet the minimum needs per year.

"We have proven that in court hearings because Indonesia's results or abilities in producing white crystal sugar are not comparable to its needs, that is what import mechanisms are needed apart from stock needs, maintaining stocks, there is also maintaining sugar prices, the price at that time is high, what is the procurement mechanism so that it can be realized immediately in high-price areas, that's imports are carried out, so there are two reasons for importing one to maintain stock, the second is to stabilize prices," said Zaid.

In order to stabilize prices, the government does not import materials because the selling price to the public is much higher, for this reason, a policy of importing raw materials is taken to be processed into GKP.

There are many advantages by implementing this mechanism, including increasing state foreign exchange because we import raw materials and manage them into finished materials.

Second, to open up new jobs because there was a process of turning raw to mature earlier. The three selling prices to the community are much more stable than importing finished materials.

"The four GKM imports were changed to GKP, the GKP was then distributed to the public in expert calculations at the time we were in court, the community benefited greatly from the decline in prices, approximately around Rp. 8 trillion, yes," said Zaid.