Bali. The Oil Palm Plantation Fund Management Agency or BPDPKS on Thursday revealed that it could potentially lose Rp 10 trillion ($634.5 million) from the export levy exemption that has just gotten an extension.

However, this is not something to worry about as BPDPKS collected a whopping Rp 71 trillion in levies last year, the agency’s president director Eddy Abdurrachman said at the 2022 Indonesian Palm Oil Conference in Bali. 

“The government has decided to waive the export levy until the end of December. The potential loss for BPDPKS’ revenue is almost Rp 10 trillion, and that is quite a large amount. Praise be to God, based on our projections, we still have funds [needed] for all of our programs, including the B40, because of the windfall last year,” Eddy told the conference.

“In 2021, we collected Rp 71 trillion in export levies,” he said.

The export levy exemption has been in effect since July. 

Earlier this week, the government announced that it would continue to waive the levy until the year-end. But they would reimpose the levy if the reference price for crude palm oil is greater than or equal to $800 per metric ton. 

Coordinating Minister for Economic Affairs Airlangga Hartarto on Monday reported that the price still stood at $713 per metric ton, far below the threshold. He said that the government decided to prolong the waiver because the market index price for biodiesel was lower than that of diesel, hence no incentives for biodiesel yet.

Data showed export levy accounted for most of what BPDPKS made in 2021.

Last year, BPDPKS earned Rp 75.45 trillion, of which Rp 71.64 trillion was export levies. About Rp 810 billion came from fund management. 

B40 is a blend of 40 percent palm oil-based biofuel and diesel. Indonesia began conducting the B40 road test in July 2022, two years since the B30 mandate came into effect.