The government will require exports of strategic natural resources to go through a newly established export body, PT Danantara Sumberdaya Indonesia (DSI). But will this truly close the revenue leakage gaps that President Prabowo Subianto hopes to address?
Fuad Bawazier, Board of Trustees of Prasasti, believes the formation of DSI addresses a long-standing structural problem: fragmented export recording across ports, weak price validation, and suboptimal foreign exchange repatriation. As a major commodity-producing nation, Indonesia needs an instrument capable of consolidating export records, price validation, and forex repatriation more systematically.
“This step is in line with the need to safeguard foreign exchange reserves, strengthen state revenues, and support exchange rate stability amid ongoing external pressures,” said Fuad in a written statement on Friday (22/5).
He noted that the government has, for the first time, formally acknowledged the scale of state losses due to export under-invoicing. President Prabowo Subianto recently estimated the leakage at US$ 908 billion equivalent to Rp 15,400 trillion over the period 1991–2024.
“This figure is equivalent to more than four times the 2026 State Budget, or an average of Rp 450 trillion lost every year — nearly a quarter of Indonesia’s entire tax revenue today,” said Fuad.
Nevertheless, Prasasti stressed that DSI’s success will depend heavily on the clarity of its implementation mechanism and the quality of policy communication to businesses, investors, and the public. Even a strong policy substance requires credible implementation design to gain acceptance from all stakeholders.
Prasasti’s Policy and Program Director, Piter Abdullah, said the implementation phase is a critical moment for the government and Danantara to affirm DSI’s position as a market-based transparency instrument.
“The challenge is ensuring that market and industry perceptions remain positive during the transition period. DSI needs to be positioned as a mechanism for strengthening export recording, price validation, and forex repatriation not as a body that extracts margins through unilateral price controls. This distinction is important to prevent unnecessary concerns from businesses and investors,” said Piter.
Meanwhile, Victoria Fanggidae, Executive Director of The Prakarsa, said in a separate statement that mis-invoicing occurs at the transaction level — through manipulation of prices, volumes, quality, or HS code classifications.
“Shifting export control from private actors to a state entity does not automatically close these gaps. State-owned enterprises transacting with overseas affiliates face similar incentives and loopholes, and may actually be harder to supervise if their public accountability is weak,” she said.
In her view, centralizing exports without reforming the beneficial ownership transparency regime risks merely relocating opacity, not eliminating it.
She also pointed out that Presidential Regulation (Perpres) No. 13 of 2018 on the Implementation of Beneficial Ownership Principles for Corporations has been in place for nearly a decade, yet Indonesia remains stuck in administrative self-declaration.
Indonesia’s 2024 EITI (Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative) validation also highlighted weak verification of beneficial ownership data and the absence of mandatory identification of Politically Exposed Persons (PEPs) , two structural gaps that allow transfer pricing practices and asset concealment to continue.
Aryanto Nugroho, National Coordinator of Publish What You Pay (PWYP) Indonesia, argued that the 34-year leakage has persisted not because of who exports, but because of weak data integration between the Directorate General of Customs (Bea Cukai), the Directorate General of Taxes (DJP), and the Financial Intelligence Unit (PPATK), as well as minimal cross-jurisdictional trade data exchange.
“Without accelerating the revision of Perpres 13/2018, centralizing exports through a state-owned enterprise will not close the leakage,” he said.
He added that the Perpres revision must include a shift to a two-stage verification regime: integration of DJP, Bea Cukai, and PPATK data, as well as making beneficial ownership transparency a mandatory prerequisite for export licensing.
Source” Kata Data