The Business Competition Supervisory Commission (KPPU) asked the Ministry of Trade to immediately issue a Garlic Import Approval (SPI) for a number of companies that have obtained Horticultural Product Import Recommendations (RIPH) from the Ministry of Agriculture so that the commodity price increase does not occur.
KPPU Deputy for Studies and Advocacy, Taufik Ariyanto, encouraged the Ministry of Trade to study the current stock of garlic which is running low. "Hopefully it can be avoided there will be no increase in the price of garlic in March and early April if the Ministry of Trade responds quickly to issue the SPI," he said as quoted by Antara, Wednesday (10/2/2021). KPPU noted that the stock of garlic in early 2021 was between 150 thousand tons and 178 thousand tons. If the calculation of national consumption per month is 45 thousand tons, the consumption for January - March 2021 will reach 135 thousand tons. "This means that at the beginning of April the stock was only around 15 thousand - 43 thousand tons, or the demand for consumption was greater than the existing stock. "If we don't clean up from now on, there will be a scarcity of garlic which will result in an increase in the price of onions in the market," he said.
Deputy Chairperson of KPPU, Guntur Syahputra Saragih, added that the problems in the garlic commodity stem from the smooth flow of imports, therefore the Ministry of Trade and Ministry of Agriculture are expected to learn from events in the past years. "Do not hinder the granting of import permits for both RIPH and SPI," he said. Previously, the Ministry of Agriculture's Director General of Horticulture, Prihasto Setyanto, revealed that the stock of garlic was not yet able to meet the needs, and the imported stock was starting to run low, which is estimated to start at the end of March or early April.
According to him, the Ministry of Agriculture has issued a number of Horticultural Product Import Recommendations (RIPH) to anticipate this shortage, and the continuation of the import process is within the domain of the Ministry of Trade (Kemendag). "We predict that April will experience a shortage in the need for garlic," said the Ministry of Agriculture's Director General of Horticulture Prihasto Setyanto in a hearing with Commission IV of the DPR some time ago.
Separately, the Indonesian Onion Traders Association (PPBN) said that currently the price of garlic at the importer level has reached IDR 20,000 per kilogram, and at market traders it is close to IDR 30,000 per kilogram. Meanwhile, the highest retail price (HET) of garlic has been set at IDR 32,000. "If it continues to creep up again, the price of garlic will be above the HET in a short time. If the stock is sufficient, the price should be stable, but if there is an increase, logically, the stock will start to decrease," said Deputy Chairman of PPBN Mulyadi.
