- The bill cements the right of oil palm planters to operate on peat soil, at a time
   when President Joko Widodo is trying to enforce new peat protections to stop another
   outbreak of devastating fires and haze.
- The bill has also been criticized for outlining a variety of tax breaks and duty
   relief schemes for palm oil investors, although those provisions have been dialed back ­
   but not completely eliminated ­ in the latest draft.
- The bill's main champion in the House of Representatives is the Golkar Party's Firman
   Soebagyo. He says it will help farmers and protect Indonesian palm oil from foreign
   intervention.
- Responding to mounting public criticism, some cabinet members recently asked the
   House to abandon the bill, but Soebagyo, who is leading the deliberations, says they will
   continue.

JAKARTA ­ A new palm oil bill is the latest battleground in the fight over how to regulate
Indonesia’s plantation sector in the wake of the 2015 fire and haze crisis, one of the
worst environmental disasters in the country’s history.

Legislators pushing the bill say it will help farmers and protect the nation’s palm oil
industry from foreign intervention. But critics say it is actually a plum deal for large
corporations, as well as a means for vested interests to undermine peatland protection
measures President Joko Widodo installed to prevent a repeat of the 2015 fires, which
burned an area the size of Vermont, emitted more carbon daily than all of Europe and
sickened half a million people.

The Indonesian Palm Oil Association (GAPKI) has expressed its support of the bill. The
lobby group’s leaders speak oftenof a conspiracy by Western soybean and rapeseed oil
interests to undermine Indonesian palm oil for competitive purposes. The Southeast Asian
nation is the world’s largest producer of the commodity, found in everything from
chocolate to laundry detergent.

Read whole article