JAKARTA – The Indonesian Palm Oil Association (GAPKI) Chairman Eddy Martono hopes that the current government will resolve the problem of overlapping regulations on palm oil industries ahead of the transition toward the new government.

“There are overlapping regulations that have confused the palm oil industry players. Those regulations should be simplified, and there shouldn’t be too many institutions assigned to manage the palm oil industries,” Eddy Martono said in Jakarta on Monday (25/03/2024).

Eddy cited the example of regulation on  developing the smallholder plantations at 20% of total plantation areas of companies. Three ministries are assigned to manage the development project with each of them applying different policies. As a result, the industry players are confused on which to follow.

“The palm oil commodity has proven to be Indonesia’s biggest contributor of foreign exchange and the backbone of national economy. So, the palm oil industry players hope they can do their businesses safely and comfortably,” he said.

Besides policy simplification, Eddy also hoped that the new government will use the instruments of export tax (BK) and export levy (PE) to make the CPO more competitive than other vegetable oils, such as soybean, sunflower, and others.

“We hope cases like that in January shouldn’t be recurring. At that time the price of palm oil was more expensive than that of soybean. Usually, it is the soybean that is more expensive. Last year we also saw that the price of sunflower was cheaper than the palm oil,” said Eddy. (*)

Source: Beritasatu.com