Indonesia's central bankers hunt 'chili mafia' for stoking inflation

Jakarta

THEY'RE called the chili mafia - a shady group of wholesalers who manipulate the price of Indonesia's favourite spice - and the nation's central bankers are out to smash them.

The fact that Bank Indonesia has joined the police on the front line of fighting crime is an indication of how the archipelago nation's economy functions, and sometimes doesn't. The bank's public enemy No 1 one is inflation, which for most Indonesians is chiefly influenced by the price of food.

And in Indonesia, food means chili.

So when prices of th…