No Price Hike for Permium: Minster Sudirman

TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - Energy and Mineral Resources Minister Sudirman Said asserted that he would not increase the price of subsidized fuels - the Premium and Solar - in August, dismissing price adjustment proposed by the Directorate General of Oil and Gas.

"The price will be decided in November," Sudirman said during a halal bihalal (gathering) with journalists in Jakarta on Friday, July 31, 2015.

Earlier, the Directorate General of Oil and Gas said that the prices of Premium and Solar would be adjusted and a new scheme of price adjustment will be applied in August 2015.

The price adjustment scheme would be based on the period of price evaluation. Based on the quarterly evaluation, the economic price of premium would stand at Rp 8,850 per liter with rupiah’s exchange rate of Rp 13,091 per US dollar. Meanwhile, the price in August would increase to Rp 8,600 based on the four-month evaluation. If the price was to be evaluated on a semester basis, the price in August would be set at Rp 8,200 per liter with an assumption that the rupiah's exchange rate would stand at Rp 12,989 per US dollar.

Wiratmadja Puja, the director general of oil and gas at the Energy and Mineral Resources Ministry, said that the six-month evaluation option was the most plausible one because the price adjustment was not too different with the current price.

Meanwhile, Sudirman said that the price adjustment in November was aimed at maintaining the stability of subsidized fuel prices. Sudirman added that November would be the right time to evaluate the international oil prices.

PT Pertamina said that it would wait for government's policy in relation to the plan. Pertamina’s spokesperson Wianda Pusponegoro said that the company served a function to report economic prices of fuels and the price difference covered by the company. It was later revealed that Pertamina suffered a total loss of Rp 12 trillion (US$923 million) for maintaining the Premium price from March to June 2015.

ROBBY IRFANY