"Please inform us if you see any merchants doing this, and we will penalize them," said Moga Simatupang, the ministry's Acting Director General of Consumer Protection and Trade Order (PKTN), in Jakarta on Monday.
The first measure will be a written warning, he said. If they continue to violate the regulation, their business license will be revoked.
The strict regulation banning the sale of MinyaKita under the bundling system is outlined in Circulation Letter No. 3 of 2023 on the sale of subsidized cooking oil.
Recently, it has been discovered that some merchants are selling MinyaKita by bundling it with several products in a single package. This is clearly a violation of the regulation.
Merchants are also prohibited from selling MinyaKita at a price above Rp14,000 per liter or Rp15,500 per kilogram. This applies to first and second distributors, as well as retailers.
MinyaKita is even being sold on TikTok Shop. Simatupang said this clearly violates the regulation.
He informed that the violating merchants constantly change the names of cooking oil products in the bundles they sell online to avoid being reported.
He also mentioned that his team is collaborating with TikTok Shop management and the Indonesian E-commerce Association (iDEA) to take down the accounts of such merchants.
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Translator: Maria C G P, Fadhli Ruhman
Editor: Anton Santoso
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