KPPU Requests Police Assistance In Recalling Cooking Oil Business Actors

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SURABAYA - The Business Competition Supervision Commission (KPPU) is ready to ask the police for assistance to recall business actors regarding the increase in cooking oil prices. Because at the first summons, they were all absent.

KPPU chairman Ukay Karyadi said that until 19 April 2022, KPPU had summoned 11 parties, including six producers, three packers and two distributors.

However, not all of the summoned parties were present, and only one representative was present for each party.

"Therefore, we will reschedule the summons. They were not present for various reasons. So we will call again," said Ukay, quoted by Antara, Tuesday, April 19.

Ukay emphasized that if the second summons did not heed the summons, KPPU would ask the police for assistance in bringing the business actors in.

"In fact, we will also reveal the identities of those business actors who are integrated into business groups," he said.

Ukay said that from several business groups it was suspected that there was a cooking oil cartel. This can be seen from the events so far where the price of cooking oil has started to rise significantly since October 2021.

Ukay explained that there are not many actors in the cooking oil business, and they are part of eight major groups that control 70 percent of the cooking oil market in Indonesia.

These eight business groups are highly integrated from upstream to downstream. And they produce brands that are on the market and are widely known to the public.

"They all have their own oil palm plantations, as if they have coordinated to raise this price," explained Ukay.

Therefore, he said, for this case the KPPU will apply three articles in Law no. 5/1999 concerning the Prohibition of Monopolistic Practices and Unfair Business Competition.

The three articles, namely article 5 paragraph 1 related to price fixing, article 11 related to cartels and article 19 letter C related to restrictions on circulation.

"Three articles are for national cases, while in the regions there are cases related to conditional purchases," said Ukay.