Indonesia Sets Rice Price Controls To Curb CPI, Help Farmers

Indonesia's government has set fixed prices for rice in order to strengthen rural economies by ensuring prices are remunerative to rice growers, and check inflation by ensuring the staple is affordable to consumers, ministers announced Saturday.

The government maintains reserve stockpiles of rice in warehouses owned by Bulog, its logistics agency, which it distributes as emergency relief or for price control operations.

Details on how the price of rice would be controlled under the new scheme weren't made available, however the government normally deflates spikes in domestic rice prices by conducting so-called market operations, whereby stockpiled rice from Bulog warehouses is distributed onto local markets.