Idonesia's anti-trust body fines cooking oil firms for supply restrictions

Indonesia's anti-monopoly agency fined seven cooking oil companies over $2 million each for restricting sales during last year's supply shortages.

Last year, the KKPU started looking into how companies behaved when cooking oil prices went up significantly. This situation led the Indonesian government to set a temporary limit on how much cooking oil could be sold and later banned the export of palm oil, which is used as cooking oil in Indonesia, for three weeks.

Indonesia is the world's biggest producer of palm oil.

According to Dinni Melanie, the chairperson of the KPPU panel, seven out of the 27 companies involved in the case were found guilty of restricting the distribution of their cooking oil brands during the period when a retail price limit was in effect in early 2022.

Among the seven companies mentioned, one is Salim Ivomas Pratama, which is a part of Indofood Group, the largest food company in Indonesia. The other two companies are units of Wilmar Group. Salim Ivomas and Wilmar have not yet responded to Reuter's request for comment.

These are the companies were ordered to pay fines ranging from 1 billion rupiah ($68,050.36) to 40.9 billion rupiah ($2.78).

All 27 companies were cleared of the KPPU's price fixing charge.