The government will mandate the export of strategic natural resources through a newly established export agency, PT Danantara Sumberdaya Indonesia (DSI). Will this move truly close the revenue leakage gap, as President Prabowo Subianto hopes?
Prasasti Board of Trustees Fuad Bawazier assessed that the government's move to establish the DSI addresses long-standing structural issues, namely fragmented export recording across ports, weak price validation, and suboptimal foreign exchange repatriation.
As a major commodity country, he said, Indonesia needs an instrument capable of consolidating recording, validating prices, and repatriating foreign exchange in a more systematic manner.
"This step is in line with the need to maintain foreign exchange reserves, strengthen state revenues, and support exchange rate stability amid ongoing external pressures," Fuad said in a written statement on Friday (May 22).
He noted that the government has finally acknowledged for the first time the extent of state losses due to export under-invoicing. In a recent speech, Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto estimated the leak at US$908 billion, equivalent to Rp 15.400 trillion, between 1991 and 2024.
"This figure is equivalent to more than four times the 2026 State Budget, or an average of Rp 450 trillion lost annually. This is close to a quarter of Indonesia's total tax revenue today," Fuad said.
However, Prasasti believes the success of the DSI will be largely determined by the clarity of the implementation mechanism and the quality of policy communication to businesses, investors, and the public. Strong policy substance still requires a credible implementation design to ensure acceptance by all stakeholders.
Prasasti Policy and Program Director Piter Abdullah stated that the implementation phase is a crucial momentum for the government and Danantara to affirm DSI's position as a market-based transparency instrument.
"The challenge is ensuring positive market and industry perceptions during the transition period. The DSI needs to be positioned as a mechanism for strengthening record-keeping, price validation, and foreign exchange repatriation, not as an agency that extracts margins through unilateral price controls. This distinction is important to avoid unnecessary concerns among businesses and investors," Piter said.
Meanwhile, Executive Director of The Prakarsa, Victoria Fanggidae, in a separate statement said mis-invoicing occurs at the transaction level, such as manipulation of price, volume, quality, or HS code classification.
"Transferring export control from private players to state entities does not automatically close this loophole. State-owned enterprises that transact with foreign affiliates face similar incentives and loopholes, potentially making them even more difficult to monitor if their public accountability is weak," he said.
According to him, centralizing exports without reforming the beneficial ownership transparency regime risks shifting opacity, not closing it.
He reminded that Presidential Regulation (Perpres) Number 13 of 2018 concerning the Implementation of the Principle of Recognizing Corporate Beneficial Ownership has been in effect for almost a decade, but Indonesia is still stuck in administrative self-declaration.
The 2024 Extractive Industries Transparency Initiatives (EITI) Indonesia validation also highlighted the weak verification of BO data and the absence of mandatory identification of Politically Exposed Persons (PEPs), two structural gaps that allow transfer pricing and asset concealment practices to continue.
Aryanto Nugroho, National Coordinator of Publish What You Pay (PWYP) Indonesia, believes the 34-year-long leak is not due to who is exporting. It's due to weak data integration between Customs, the Directorate General of Taxes, and the Financial Transaction Reports and Analysis Center (PPATK), as well as minimal exchange of trade data across jurisdictions.
"Without accelerating the revision of Presidential Decree 13 of 2018, centralization in state-owned enterprises will not close the leaks," he said.
The revision of the Presidential Regulation, according to him, needs to include changes to the verification regime into two stages, namely the integration of data from the Directorate General of Taxes, Customs and Excise, and the implementation of BO transparency as a prerequisite for export licensing.
This article has appeared on Katadata.co.id with the title "The Government Requires Centralized Exports Through Danantara, Will the State Benefit?"
Author: Nuzulia Nur Rahmah
Editor: Agustiyanti