Cooking oil firm faces DSI probe

[Coss]

Morakot Industry being investigated by DSI over failure to use a third of imports to ease shortage

 

Major edible oil producer Morakot Industry Co came under the spotlight yesterday after authorities found it had not used a 1,400-tonne government-issued inventory of palm oil to produce bottled cooking oil despite acute shortage.

 

Hoarding and other charges had yet to be filed against the company, said Pol Col Narat Savetanun, deputy chief of the Department of Special Investigation (DSI), who inspected the firm's factory in Samut Prakan province.

 

The edible oil shortage has worsened in the past few months as bottled cooking oil has disappeared from the market amid rising prices.

 

Narat said Morakot Industry had an import quota of 5,000 tonnes of palm oil from the government for January-February for the production of 3.8 million bottles of cooking oil.

 

However, the firm used up only 3,600 tonnes of the quota while leaving 1,400 tonnes in storage tanks, thus failing to honour an agreement with the Commerce Ministry to produce bottled cooking oil from the raw material to ease the domestic shortage.

 

The 1,400 tonnes of raw material, imported from Malaysia by the government, is enough to produce 960,000 bottles of cooking oil, which are supposed to retail at Bt47 per bottle, as required by the government.

 

Narat said the DSI would request the Department of Internal Trade to take the unused 1,400 tonnes of palm oil to its custody.

 

Managers of Morakot Industry Co, however, said the 1,400 tonnes of palm oil was not used because it had earlier already used its own raw material to produce bottled cooking oil for the government programme so the stock was merely a reimbursement.

 

Narat said this case would become clear in the next couple of days.

 

Morakot Industry is one of 10 companies allocated palm oil import quotas to produce bottled cooking oil.

 

Altogether, they got an import quota of 30,000 tonnes but only a portion was used to produce cooking oil, resulting in the nationwide shortage.

 

Besides Morakot Industry's factory, authorities also inspected the Srinakarin branch of major retail outlet Makro and the factory of another cooking oil firm, Lamsoon Thailand, at an industrial estate in Samut Prakan province.

 

Chaipat Sonthisirikul, a Makro store manager, said the producer of Yok cooking oil had delivered 4,000 cases of its products for sale at his store in the past couple of days.

 

Makro currently limits the quantity of cooking oil each customer can buy to two bottles, Chaipat said.

 

The government has been under fire for failing to make cooking oil widely available over the past few months, with allegations that the situation was worsened by politicians seeking to gain financially from the shortage.

 

Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva said the DSI could investigate these allegations and that deputy premier Suthep Thaugsaban would chair a top-level meeting on this issue on Tuesday to find more effective solutions.

 

Suthep admitted that the first round of imports totalling 30,000 tonnes of palm oil had failed to ease the shortage while the second round of imports totalling another 120,000 tonnes had not arrived, despite being approved on February 1.

 

Leucha Oonyuang, president of the Surat Thani palm growers' association, said excessive imports would later hurt domestic growers, who are still suffering from the falling price of oil palm, despite the exorbitant price of refined cooking oil.

 

"Now, it's only Bt6-7 per kilo after rising to Bt10 for a few days, running counter to that of the refined oil price," he said.

 

Prapan Koonmee, a spokesman for the yellow-shirt movement, claimed the shortage had hit every household but had enriched politicians in power, including those in the ruling Democrat Party.

 

"The government is solving the problem at the wrong place," he said, suggesting that authorities should investigate if there were large illegal imports of crude palm oil now stored in Surat Thani, Samut Sakhon and Samut Songkhram.

 

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