The world’s largest producer of palm oil is facing a shortage of cooking oil in its domestic market. The suspension of exports could have serious consequences for other countries.
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The situation is paradoxical to say the least and could have serious global repercussions. Indonesia, the world’s largest producer of palm oil, is facing a shortage of cooking oil for its domestic market. A few days before the end of Ramadan, the country decided to stop its exports. This decision panics the price curve of this commodity present, in various forms, in half of the products of a supermarket.
This crisis has already caused deaths and injuries in demonstrations against rising prices or in endless queues in front of stores where cooking oil is still available. A situation that could now be experienced by other countries. “The government pressed the ‘panic’ button, banning all exportsexplains Doctor Sathia Varqa at the head of Palm Oil Analytics. China, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Egypt will be the first to suffer: prices there are already high, and they will continue to rise.”
For its part, Malaysia aspires to take advantage of the situation, as the world’s second largest palm oil producer. But it is not certain that the country has the means to achieve its ambitions, with in these times of the Covid-19 pandemic, a shortage of foreign workers on the plantations and historically low yields, recalls this man at the head of a plantation near Kuala Lumpur: “The harvests are done less frequently, so inevitably there are more ripe fruits, the work is therefore slower and therefore a lot of fruit is lost, because it has rotted.” On the world market, other vegetable oils remain even more expensive than palm oil, which is becoming scarce.