By: Ahmad Dzul Ilmi Muis
The government has given guarantees that food stocks are safe during Ramadan until Eid later, so people are asked not to worry. Many efforts have been made by the Government, including ensuring price stability.
A total of 12 staple foodstuffs such as rice, garlic, red cayenne pepper, chicken meat, cooking oil and so on, confirmed by Syahrul Yasin Limpo as the Minister of Agriculture that all stocks in the market have been adequately supplied. He added that the Government itself has even guaranteed the availability of cooking oil by providing a supply of 17 thousand tons with consumption of only 9 thousand tons, so that it has exceeded.
Even the Minister of Agriculture will continue to carry out sudden inspections to various traditional markets to check the availability of staple foods and also how to monitor prices to the public. He will target starting from distributors, importers and so on and continue to coordinate with local governments so that they can be more active.
Echelon I and II officials from the Ministry of Agriculture also continue to be deployed during the first week of Ramadan to continue to check and go directly to the field so that they can give warnings if violations are found to create stock shortages. Of course, all these efforts continue to be carried out to ensure the availability of stocks of basic pagan ingredients during Ramadan and ahead of Eid.
In line with the findings of the Ministry of Agriculture in the field, the DKI Jakarta Provincial Government also reported that the need for food during the month of Ramadan until Eid al-Fitr is guaranteed to be safe and prices will continue to be maintained to remain stable. Of course, with reports that the availability of food stocks is safe and maintained, it is hoped that in the future there will be no such thing as inflation during this Ramadan.
The government is optimistic that inflation will not occur in Indonesia because inflation only occurs when the demand for goods is very high but the availability is limited so that the prices of goods will automatically skyrocket. However, it is precisely in Indonesia that it has been guaranteed that the stock of various kinds of staple food has been declared safe, so that inflation will not be possible.
Monitoring will also be continuously carried out by the Government and in coordination with the Regional Inflation Control Team (TPID) to obtain developments regarding stock availability and also how to report price stability amid the current COVID-19 pandemic so that certain actions can be taken immediately as soon as possible.
In particular, the DKI Jakarta Provincial Government itself even has various strategies to be able to continue to guarantee food price stability, supply availability and smooth distribution to the community. Monitoring or monitoring efforts will clearly continue to be carried out, including warehouse supervision, in addition, his party will carry out Ramadan stock security to food quality control.
Regarding the scarcity of cooking oil that has occurred for some time, the Ministry of Industry said that the stock will be guaranteed during Ramadan until Eid because the Government is currently also pouring out the cooking oil in stages. A complete overhaul of the policy regarding palm cooking oil (MGS) was even immediately completely overhauled by the Government from being trade-based to industrial-based so that distribution to the community would be much more effective and monitoring would be easier.
For this reason, it is also appealed to the whole community so that they can continue to be optimistic and do not need to panic so that they only buy goods that are in accordance with their needs. Because if people experience panic and even do panic buying, then the distribution of basic food items can be threatened that it is not evenly distributed and can be reached by all levels of society.
)* The author is an Alumni of Airlangga University