Jakarta –
Scarcity of cooking oil felt by the community, including in the DKI Jakarta area. Police suspect the emergence of ‘new players’ in the sale of cooking oil to be one of the triggers for the shortage.
South Jakarta Metro Police Chief Kombes Budhi Herdi Susianto said a number of cooking oil sellers did not get stock from distributors. This, according to him, happened because there were ‘impromptu entrepreneurs’ who switched to selling cooking oil.
“Then we indicated that why there is a shortage now, because we suspected from the start that there were several parties who had been selling cooking oil but they had not received a supply. Now, while there are parties who were originally not sellers of cooking oil and later became sellers of cooking oil,” said South Jakarta Metro Police Chief Kombes Budhi Herdi Susianto to reporters, Friday (25/2/2022).
Budhi said the findings form the basis of police investigations from the consumer to the producer level. The police found the fact that there were manufacturers who sold cooking oil to new distributors outside their areas of competence.
“Well, then, on this basis, we conducted a bottom-up investigation, then we found allegations that the sales that had been made to distributors were actually being sold to new distributors who were not in their field,” he said.
Budhi further appealed to manufacturers to sell cooking oil to distributors in the field of competence. He emphasized that the police will take firm action against those who play with the price of cooking oil.
“Well, from this finding, we see that cooking oil distribution this is done by people who are not experts, people who are not in the field, so we advise manufacturers not to play this with cooking oil. If later we find there is an alleged criminal act, we will process it legally, yes,” he said.
Previously, the South Jakarta Metro Police secured 26 tons of cooking oil to be sold above the highest retail price (HET). The police revealed that the distributor did not have competence in his field, because his company is a cosmetics company.
“So we found here that there are manufacturers who sell to distributors, which according to them, have only been used as distributors in two or three weeks. And actually the company is engaged in the cosmetic sector, so it’s not cooking oil,” said the South Jakarta Metro Police Chief Kombes Budhi Herdi Susianto told reporters, Friday (25/2/2022).
Budhi said the distributor sells cooking oil at prices above the highest retail price (HET). This is what then makes the price of cooking oil in the market is not stable.
“Well, this is what then (makes) the downward sales to downstream into chaos. Therefore, we will conduct an upward investigation with the manufacturer, why they then take this action, where they sell to non-expert distributors or who specializes in the field of cooking oil,” he said.
Also see ‘Visit Jambi Market, Trade Minister Calls Availability of Cooking Oil Safe’:
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