PALMOILMAGAZINE, JAKARTA – The development of palm oil plantations poses a dilemma. On one hand, environmental concerns continue to persist, which leads to another issue: the tug-of-war between palm oil for food and energy purposes.
In the case of the scarcity of palm cooking oil in 2023, the debate regarding the use of palm oil for food and energy resurfaced. Eventually, the government took action by implementing the Domestic Market Obligation (DMO) and Domestic Price Obligation (DPO) measures.
But in Focus Group Discussion (FGD) Sawit Berkelanjutan Vol. 13, with the theme “Minyak Sawit: Sumber Pangan Dan Bioenergi Berkelanjutan”, that InfoSAWIT conducted with the support of Palm Oil Plantation Fund Management Agency (PFMA), Thursday (13/4/2023) in Jakarta, it was revealed that palm cooking oil supply which was rare, happened not because of the supply and production capacity.
It happened for the price and distribution. One speaker said that according to crude palm oil (CPO) use statistic in Indonesia, 15% of CPO production in national scale or about 6,8 million tons were used as the material to produce palm cooking oil. 55% were exported. Housing needs spent up to 62% and non – housing use reached 38%.
That is why the regulation about palm cooking oil supply should be focusing on volume that relates to palm cooking oil industries. The regulation should answer every issue about price, distribution, and mechanism.
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But nowadays policy implementation still raises risks from subsidized palm cooking oil supply to continue. CPO price which gets more expensive would make more subsidy (the loss of margin) namely from palm cooking oil producers which are not integrated with CPO industries.
Distribution scheme is still dominated and affiliated by private palm cooking oil producers and they apply normal distribution. That is why in the future, distribution should be handled by companies/enterprises and applying special distribution for subsidized palm cooking oil.
Not only that, still about food and energy issue, other speakers in the FGD also suggested that palm oil industries should develop consistently, follow 2050 palm oil roadmap which Ministry of Agriculture has regulated.
If the roadmap runs well, actually, there would be phases of achievement until 2050. But sometimes many sides would work without blueprint. The right thing is about consistency. It is a must so that downstream to upstream developments including the industries would have a coordination.
For example, when Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resource wants to apply biodiesel mandatory, the program should base on the roadmap published by Ministry of Agriculture because it would be very important to get coordination among ministries and institutions to get decisions.
Just like many might know, when palm cooking oil had issue, just like in 2022, many told that there has been strong pull in CPO for food and energy sectors.
The question remains, how should the issue be solved and what to do? What has gone wrong in the policy? Our dear readers could read it in Majalah InfoSAWIT April 2023. Have a nice reading. (T2)
