Jokowi Asked To Evaluate The Performance Of Trade Minister Lutfi Who Never Resolved The Cooking Oil Problem

President Joko Widodo (Antara)

JAKARTA - Indonesia Corruption Watch (ICW) urges President Joko Widodo (Jokowi) to evaluate the performance of the Minister of Trade Muhammad Lutfi. This urge arose because he never resolved the problem of the scarcity and high cost of cooking oil in the country.

In addition, this pressure also emerged after the Attorney General's Office (AGO) named four people as suspects, including the Director General of Foreign Trade of the Ministry of Trade IWW in the alleged corruption case in granting Crude Palm Oil (CPO) export facilities.

"We urge President Jokowi to evaluate the performance of the Minister of Trade Muhammad Lutfi, who has not yet finished handling the cooking oil problem," said ICW researcher Almas Sjafrina in a written statement quoted on Friday, April 22.

ICW also conveyed the urge to the Attorney General's Office. The Adhyaksa Corps was asked not to be complacent after naming four suspects in this corruption allegation.

Almas said that the Attorney General's Office needed to investigate further whether or not there were other actors who played the role of the cooking oil mafia. "Especially officials at the Ministry of Trade," he said.

Furthermore, the Business Competition Supervisory Commission (KPPU) was asked to immediately complete their investigation of the alleged cartel and cooking oil mafia. Finally, the Ministry of Trade was asked to evaluate their policy on the export of goods.

In addition, they are asked to be more open to information on granting export and import permits. Almas also said that monitoring of the implementation of policies related to cooking oil needs to be done because there is a gap for companies to bribe.

"The Ministry of Trade should strengthen supervision over every implementation of cooking oil handling. Especially regarding bribery loopholes from corporations affected by the DMO (Domestic Market Obligation), DPO (Domestic Price Obligation) and HET (Highest Retail Price) policies," he said. The Attorney General's Office has named four suspects in corruption cases related to the provision of export facilities for crude palm oil (CPO) and its derivatives. In addition to the IWW, there are three established private parties.

They are the Senior Manager of Corporate affairs of Permata Hijau Group with the initials SMA; Commissioner of PT Wilmar Nabati Indonesia with the initials MPT; and the General Manager of PT Musim Mas with the initials PT.

The Attorney General's Office said that three suspects from the company had intensively tried to approach the Director General of Trade at the Ministry of Trade IWW to obtain a CPO export permit. In fact, the three are not companies that are entitled to export approval.

As a result of their actions, the suspects have caused losses to the country's economy. In addition, they also make cooking oil expensive and scarce in the country.