In a political concession to the state’s economic centralisation agenda, Indonesia’s powerful business consortia have announced their support for President Prabowo Subianto’s newly launched export monopoly, Jakarta Globe reports.
Following an emergency coordination assembly on June 1, the Indonesian Employers Association (Apindo), alongside the Indonesian Mining Association (IMA), the Indonesian Coal Mining Association (APBI-ICMA), the Indonesian Nickel Industry Forum (FINI), and the Indonesian Palm Oil Association (Gapki), issued a rare, sweeping joint endorsement backing the total centralisation of the country’s resource wealth.
The corporate capitulation lands on the designated first day of the state’s trade shake-up. The policy mandates that PT Danantara Sumberdaya Indonesia (Persero), or DSI, a state-controlled trading monolith owned by the nascent sovereign wealth fund Danantara Investment Management, will serve as the exclusive exporter of the nation’s key resource pillars.
The mechanism targets a $66.13bn (approximately IDR1,073 trillion) in annualised resource revenues, comprising roughly 23.4% of Indonesia’s entire export economy. The state’s structural takeover is designed to aggressively plug systemic fiscal holes that have plagued the resource sector for over three decades. According to data cited by the Prabowo administration, corporate practices like under-invoicing, transfer pricing, and the offshore retention of export earnings have caused a staggering cumulative tax revenue leakage of $908bn over the last 34 years.
Finance Minister Purbaya Yudhi Sadewa and Coordinating Minister for Economic Affairs Airlangga Hartarto emphasised that routing all trades through DSI will improve transaction credibility. By integrating with the Directorate General of Customs and Excise’s CEISA 4.0 digital platform, the state can force the immediate repatriation of all foreign exchange earnings directly back into the domestic banking grid, building strong upward defence lines for the rupiah.
While Apindo and the mining syndicates publicly framed their backing as a patriotic alignment with Article 33 of the 1945 Constitution, their joint statement functions as a calculated effort to prevent a total commercial bottleneck.
Led by Apindo Chairwoman Shinta Kamdani, the industry cartels reminded state planners that the target commodities operate under disparate business models, where the underlying contract frameworks, infrastructure logistics, international buyer profiles, and complex financing covenants governing bulk steam coal diverge completely from those of refined ferronickel, specialised ferroalloys, or volatile liquid crude palm oil (CPO). The associations demanded a hard guarantee that all existing and long-term supply contracts with international steel mills, power utilities, and global refineries will be legally protected and honoured without DSI interference.
To protect sensitive commercial secrets, the consortium proposed the development of a highly secure, closed-loop integrated export platform. This digital firewall would restrict DSI’s access to broad regulatory oversight while preventing state officials from leaking competitive pricing models or customer profiles back into the open market.
To reassure jittery global commodity markets and institutional bondholders, Danantara Chief Operating Officer Dony Oskaria confirmed that DSI will be governed by rigid, western-style corporate standards. In a highly unusual move for a strategic state trading body, the government has appointed veteran Australian commodities executive Luke Thomas Mahony as the inaugural President Director of DSI.