About three weeks after Russian troops invaded Ukraine, housewife Liesye Setiana was forced to close her banana chip business as cooking oil supplies dried up across the country.
Millions of consumers and small business owners in the world’s fourth most populous nation have been rattled for months by skyrocketing cooking oil prices.
As the war between the two major grain and sunflower seed producers sent jitters through global markets, many producers rushed to shift their goods abroad to cash in on soaring rates.
Liesye would travel to a supermarket over an hour from her remote East Java village of Baruharjo to buy a daily eight-litre batch of palm oil that could keep her business alive.
But the 49-year-old mother of two would be turned away, with sellers heavily rationing the commodity used in products ranging from cosmetics to chocolate spreads.
“I was fuming and told the employees that I really need the cooking oil for personal use, not for hoarding,” said Liesye, who used to make up to 750,000 rupiah (RM227) a day selling her savoury yellow snack.
“How come we have cooking oil shortages when Indonesia is the world’s top palm oil producer?”
Her battle for supplies is just a snapshot of the cooking oil crisis that has spurred hours-long queues of residents with jerry cans in hand across Indonesia’s most populous island, Java, and others such as Borneo.
Two people died in March from exhaustion – including one who had queued at three different supermarkets, according to local media – as they waited in searing heat to get their hands on a product that rose to 20,100 rupiah (RM6) a litre at its height.
Indonesia produces about 60% of global palm oil supplies, with one-third consumed domestically.
The squeeze on cooking oil at home forced the Indonesian government to impose a now-lifted ban on exports last month, easing prices and shoring up domestic supplies.
But at the end of May, the price of bulk cooking oil, the most affordable in the country, still hovered at about 18,300 rupiah (RM5.50) per litre on average, above the government’s target of 14,000 rupiah (RM4.20), according to official data. — AFP
