Cooking Oil Entrepreneur 'Nyayur', CPO Prices Keep Moving Up

Illustration (Photo: Doc. Antara)

JAKARTA - The armed conflict that occurred in Eastern Europe between Russia and Ukraine became the most powerful catalyst in increasing the prices of various important world commodities. This was confirmed by the Central Statistics Agency (BPS) in a presentation made today.

Head of BPS Margo Yuwono said that one of the prima donna commodities is crude palm oil aka CPO. According to Margo, the raw material for cooking oil has increased significantly since the beginning of last year.

“The conflict in Ukraine pushed the prices of some commodities up. One of the most visible is CPO," he said when giving a press statement to reporters virtually on Monday, May 9.

In his explanation, CPO prices in the first quarter of 2022 soared 18.44 percent quarter to quarter (qtq) compared to the fourth quarter of 2021.

Striking conditions will even be very visible if compared on an annual basis or year on year (yoy).

"Even if we compare it with the first quarter of 2021, the CPO price will grow by 52.74 percent," he said.

Not only that, Margo also assessed that a similar situation occurred in a number of other important commodities exported by Indonesia.

"Coal also has a very sharp increasing trend q to q by 40.24 percent and year on year also grows very extreme by 153.3 percent," he asserted.

Then, continued Margo, crude oil increased q to q by 23.43 percent and year on year by 62.94 percent. The same goes for tin, copper and nickel mining commodities.

“I see how fast price developments occur at the global level. The development of commodity prices has provided a windfall for Indonesia's exports, which grew impressively in the first quarter of this year," he stressed.

From the data shared by BPS, it was revealed that during the first three months of 2022 there was a trade balance surplus of 9.33 billion US dollars.

Although lower than the fourth quarter of 2021, which recorded a surplus of USD 10.31 billion, this notch extends the record trade surplus since the third quarter of 2020.