Published by
Mongabay
Mongabay
JAKARTA — Cartel practices have been blamed for a scarcity of cooking oil in the world’s top producer of palm oil — but government policies seen as coddling the industry have also come under scrutiny. Households across Indonesia have since last October experienced acute shortages of cooking oil. Even when supplies have been available, prices have often been multiples of what the product would usually retail for. The scarcity has prompted widespread complaints from regular citizens and from politicians, with parliament launching hearings into why Indonesia, which produces more than half of the …