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Firms turn to courts to recover losses from govt cooking oil flip-flop
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Former trade minister Muhammad Lutfi (left) walks toward a building at the Attorney General's Office (AGO) complex in Jakarta on July 9, 2023, to undergo questioning by investigators as a witness in a graft case pertaining to domestic cooking oil shortages in 2022. (Antara/Asprilla Dwi Adha)
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everal cooking oil producers and retailers have filed cases against the Trade Ministry seeking to reclaim what they say are billions of rupiah in losses resulting from government policies last year intended to bring down the price of the commodity.
Three major cooking oil companies filed separate cases against the ministry in September, two of which had their initial hearings on Oct. 31, namely Permata Hijau Group and Wilmar Group. Meanwhile, Musim Mas Group had its court hearing on Tuesday.
The three claimed they had incurred a combined Rp 1.6 trillion (US$103 million) of financial losses, with Wilmar reporting the highest individual figure of Rp 947 billion, followed Musim Mas with Rp 551 billion and Permata Hijau with Rp 140 billion.
Marcella Santoso, an attorney representing the three companies, said the losses were mainly caused by rapidly changing regulations that overlapped with and contradicted one another.
The lawsuits aim to prove that the three companies incurred losses during the period of the cooking oil policy debacle, she said.
“The goal of the lawsuit is not to imprison a minister or a director general, not that. When the lawsuit is ruled in our favor, the punishment will be that the government must set a regulation to recover our losses,” Marcella told The Jakarta Post on Tuesday.
Read also: Cooking oil producers lost 'billions of rupiah' from policy flip-flop: Association
