Solar Subsidy Demand Is Predicted To Increase, Pertamina Will Increase Quota To 16 Million Kilo-Liters

President Director of PT Pertamina Nicke Widyawati. (Photo: Doc. Antara)

JAKARTA - President Director of PT Pertamina, Nicke Widyawati, estimates that there will be a surge in subsidized diesel consumption considering that people's activities have returned to normal. This year, the government has set the quota for subsidized diesel for this year to be 14.9 million KL.

"But we predict it will increase to 16 million KL," said Nicke in the RDP with Commission VI, Monday, March 28.

Thus, the estimated consumption of subsidized diesel will increase by 7.38 percent from the quota set by Pertamina this year.

Nicke also highlighted that the sales of non-subsidized Solar actually declined. He explained that until now the portion of subsidized diesel fuel consumption has reached 93 percent of the total consumption of diesel fuel types, while non-subsidized diesel consumption has only reached 7 percent.

"We will investigate with the Upstream Subsidiary (APH). The queues that we see are actually from big industries such as palm oil and mining, this must be brought under control," added Nicke.

Nicke also explained that currently there is a fairly high price disparity between subsidized and non-subsidized diesel. He said the difference was at IDR 7,800 per liter between the set price and the economic price. He suspects that there is a shift in the use of diesel fuel from non-subsidized to subsidized diesel.

"So we cooperate with APH to control monitoring in the field so that this is in accordance with what is intended," he continued.

To control this, Nicke is pushing for regulations such as a Ministerial Decree (Kepmen) to ensure that subsidized fuel is not misdirected.