Jokowi Bans Cooking Oil Exports by April 28

JAKARTADAILY.ID - President Jokowi or Joko Widodo will stop the export of cooking oils and their raw materials. The policy will come into effect Thursday, April 28, 2022, until a deadline that will be determined at a later date.

"Today, I have chaired a meeting on people's basic needs, especially those related to the availability of cooking oil in the country. I decided that the government would prohibit the export of raw materials for cooking oil and the cooking oils," Jokowi said as quoted from the Presidential Secretariat YouTube page, aired on Friday, April 23, 2022.

Jokowi said the decision was taken to maintain the availability of cooking oil in the country.

"I will continue monitoring and evaluating the implementation of this policy so that the availability of cooking oil in the country is abundant at affordable prices," he said.

The scarcity led to an increase in cooking oil prices in Indonesia a few months ago.

To overcome the problem of cooking oil scarcity, the government had issued several policies, such as launching a simple-packaged cooking oil for Rp 14,000/liter at retail and traditional markets.

In addition, the government also required cooking oil producers to meet a domestic supply of 20 percent of the total export volume.

The government has revoked the highest retail price (HET) for packaged cooking oil and left it to the market mechanism at the time the shortage of cooking oil occurred.

However, the policy instead made packaged cooking oil prices soar even though the stock was abundant.

The root of the chaotic cooking oil problem began to be exposed after the Head of the Indonesian Attorney General's Office revealed allegations of corruption in the granting of export permits for crude palm oil at the Ministry of Trade.

The Attorney General's Office has named four suspects in the case, namely the Director-General of Foreign Trade of the Ministry of Trade Indarsari Wisnu Wardhana and three cooking oil company executives.

The article was translated from Pikiran-Rakyat.com's article titled "Jokowi Larang Ekspor Minyak Goreng Mulai 28 April 2022".
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