Coffee prices

Coffee prices

Your article in The Jakarta Post on Dec. 4, 1995, about the 50 percent decline in coffee prices on the world market was good news. In the article you also mentioned that coffee is cheaper on supermarket shelves around the world. If your reporter had done his homework a bit better he also could have remarked that this is not the case in Indonesian supermarkets, where coffee is still selling at the same high prices in spite of Indonesia being a coffee producing country.

I wonder why the consumer over here doesn't profit from the lower prices. One producer of a well-known brand even tries to attract buyers by offering hadiah (bonus) of cars, TV sets, etc. Do they use high coffee prices to finance this promotion campaign? I would prefer to pay a lower price and not have a chance of winning a prize.

LIONEL SLUITER

Garut, West Java