Jakarta – The ministry of environment and forestry (KLHK) has asked the palm oil industry players to comply with all of the prevailing laws, especially on plantation concessions on the forestry areas.
“BPKP (The finance and development supervision board) has found many problems in the palm oil industries, from upstream to downstream sectors. But in the near future the Satgas (the palm oil task force recently established by the government to improve its governance), will only focus on plantation licensing on the upstream sector,” KLHK Secretary General Bambang Hendroyono said during a socialization of solutions for oil palm plantation licensing on forestry areas in Jakarta on Monday.
President Joko Widodo (Jokowi) has recently set up the palm oil task force (Satgas) through the presidential decree (Keppres) no.9/2023. Aimed to improve the governance of palm oil industries and optimize state income from the industry, the Satgas is led by Maritime and Investment Coordinating Minister Luhut B Pandjaitan, and Finance Deputy Minister Suahasil Nazara as deputy chairman.
Bambang said that oil palm plantations are divided into two typology clusters based on article 110A and article 110B of the omnibus law on job creation (UU Ciptaker).
“Included in the category of article 110A are oil palm plantations having plantation business licenses in line with spatial planning by the time of issuance but their legal status are in productive forest areas, protected forest areas, and conservation forest areas. It is because of the dispute between the spatial planning before the application of the law (UU) no.26/ 2007 and the locations in forest areas,” he said.
“The second category based on the article 110B stipulates the solutions for the oil palm plantations in productive forest areas, protected forest areas, and conservation forest areas, but they have no forestry licenses. The solutions will be based on administrative sanctions, which are payments of administrative fines of forestry sector,” he said.
Bambang hopes the oil palm plantation players will soon get all of their necessary licenses in accordance with the prevailing laws regarding the oil palm business activities.
BPKP Deputy in charge of investigation, Agustina Arumsari, has also pointed out the impacts of the problems in the oil palm plantations. “Based on BPKP finding in 2021/2022, the problems include the problem of bulk coking oil in the market, and forest encroachment,” he said. (*)
Source: detik.com
