Sticky Fingers
The price of sugar is soaring. Collusion between sugar mills and traders is behind the crisis. Officials are blaming each other. A new decision has abruptly emerged: Bulog, after being banned from joining this business for some time, is now again allowed to import white sugar. Will this alluring trade again serve the interests of Palace circles?
March 4, 2003
Rini Soewandi stared in wide-eyed amazement last week. What she found right before her in the warehouses of Ngadiredjo and Meritjan sugar mills in Kediri, East Java, left her mouth agape. There she saw stacks of sacks containing tens of thousands of tons of sugar in front of her eyes.
Not long after that, the Minister of Trade & Industry witnessed another peculiarity in Sabang, the westernmost town of Sumatra, where 17,000 tons of sugar were pi
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