Examining Policies on Controlling Prices Indonesian Crude Palm Oil (CPO) and Cooking Oil

Indonesia is the world’s largest producer and exporter of crude palm oil (CPO), accounting for nearly half of global supply in 2022. The CPO industry’s growth has been driven in part by rising prices. However, high CPO prices have also led to higher domestic prices, including for cooking oil. This has put pressure on the Indonesian government to regulate prices through policies, such as export restrictions. This paper examines the effectiveness of export-restricting policies and other domestic price shocks that the government could intervene in. Using Structural Vector Autoregression (SVAR) models, the paper finds that export-restricting policies are not effective in reducing domestic CPO and cooking oil prices. This is due to the strong price linkages between international CPO prices and domestic CPO prices. Additionally, the observed domestic household- and firm-level shocks are also insignificant in affecting prices, limiting the scope for government intervention. Finally, the paper suggests that the government should be cautious about interfering with market prices and should instead focus on improving access to affordable food products.