Jakarta, Sept. 18 -- Indonesia is stepping up its investigation into 25 of 27 rice brands advertised as fortified with micronutrients that failed to meet the nutritional standards stated on their packaging, with estimated losses to consumers reaching 89 trillion IDR (about 5 billion USD).

Minister of Agriculture and head of the Indonesian National Food Agency (Bapanas) Andi Amran Sulaiman said on September 17 that testing results from four laboratories showed that 25 rice brands did not meet the nutritional content advertised.

He said the main tactic was to use packaging and labels to advertise higher nutritional values than the actual content for profit.

While regular rice has a reference price of around 13,500 IDR per kilogramme, som...