The Ministry of Trade to Supervise and Control the Bulk Cooking Oil Availability on Preventing Shortages

JAKARTADAILY.ID - The shortage of cooking oil is still an ongoing issue of the public. The lack of cooking oil availability is predicted to be caused by the previously established highest retail price or HET for packaged cooking oil.

Although the HET for packaged cooking oil has been revoked and its availability is increasingly abundant, fear of supply shortages for bulk cooking oil has begun to rise.

Furthermore, the Director-General of Domestic Trade at the Ministry of Trade, Oke Nurwan, assessed a potential shortage of bulk cooking oil supplies with HET. Thus, his team has supervised this matter to avoid the concern.

"From that conclusion, currently with the latest policy, the government has determined to continue opposing the market mechanism, namely by implementing the HET of bulk cooking oil. From the results of the current discussion, there is potential for scarcity in bulk cooking oil," he said.

He made the statement during a meeting with Commission VI of the DPR RI virtually from Jakarta on Thursday, March 24, 2022.

He also considered going against the market mechanism in the cooking oil trade as a complex challenge, as was also conveyed by the Minister of Trade, Muhammad Lutfi.

Therefore, the implementation of the Domestic Price Obligation (DPO), Domestic Market Obligation (DMO) for palm oil entrepreneurs and their derivatives to the HET of premium and simple packaged cooking oil could not run as expected.

However, the government still opposes the market mechanism for bulk cooking oil by setting HET for bulk cooking oil on Rp14,000/lt.

With the enactment of this policy, the previous Minister of Trade Regulation No. 6/2022 of the established HET for palm cooking oil set at Rp11,500/lt for bulk cooking oil, Rp13,500/lt for simple packaged cooking oil, and Rp14,000/lt r for packaged cooking premium cooking oil is no longer valid.

The article was translated from Pikiran-Rakyat.com's article titled "Minyak Goreng Curah dengan HET Berpotensi Langka, Kemendag Lakukan Pengawasan dan Pengawalan".

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