Calling Domestic CPO Production Enough To Meet National Cooking Oil Needs, GAPKI Asks The Food Task Force To Step In

Illustration. (Photo: Doc. Antara)

JAKARTA - Secretary General of the Indonesian Palm Oil Association (Gapki) Eddy Martono revealed that the amount of domestic palm oil production is sufficient for Indonesian household consumption.

He said that when the government through the Ministry of Trade imposed a domestic market obligation (DMO) rule to supply cheap raw materials to domestic cooking oil producers, the Minister of Trade (Mendag) Muhammad Lutfi reported that within 23 days the amount of oil collected was 415 million liters. .

"This is the Trade Minister himself who said it was enough. Even though our domestic consumption is only 320 million, but we have collected 415 million liters," he told VOI, Tuesday, March 15.

For this reason, continued Eddy, the problem that must be investigated is the distribution chain of cooking oil, causing a shortage in the community. He also asked the National Police's Food Task Force to focus on supervising and monitoring the distribution of cooking oil. Supervision is carried out from producers to distributors.

"We have to find out where the oil is! If there are deviations, where are the deviations? If the producers are actually the statement by the Minister of Trade himself who says it is sufficient and exceeds the need. This means that all producers have done 20 percent DMO," explained Eddy.

Meanwhile, Executive Director of the Center of Law and Economic Studies (Celios) Bhima Yudhistira, to overcome the scarcity of cooking oil in the market is not only to increase the volume of DMO to 30 percent, but must investigate distributor chains that have indications of holding back supply.

"Both the main distributors or called D1 to D2 distributors must be checked whether there are indications of holding back supplies because they want to sell at high prices during Ramadan. The article on hoarding is actually clear, it's just a matter of enforcement in the field," he told VOI.

According to him, the way that the government can do is to match the data on the production of cooking oil which is claimed to be safe with the data on sales of cooking oil.

Bhima also suggested that the Minister of Trade cancel the 30 percent DMO policy because it makes CPO prices wilder in the international market and triggers the leakage of CPO abroad because the price disparity between exports and the domestic market is getting bigger.

"What makes the price of CPO more expensive is not only the war in Ukraine, but the government's own policies. That is very unfortunate," concluded Bhima.