COO: Danantara is not 1MDB; SOE and investment risks are segregated

Jakarta (ANTARA) - The Chief Operating Officer (COO) of the Daya Anagata Nusantara Investment Management Agency (Danantara Indonesia), Dony Oskaria, has asserted that Danantara is not designed like 1 Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB), as the risks associated with State-Owned Enterprises (SOEs) and investments have been decoupled.

“The institutional structure of Danantara is designed differently from investment management schemes such as 1 Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB),” Dony stated in a briefing in Jakarta on Thursday.

He explained that since its inception, Danantara has implemented a strict separation between the management of SOEs and investment activities to mitigate potential risks.

Dony noted that the concerns of some members of the public, who compare Danantara to 1MDB, arise from the consolidation of SOE assets alongside investment functions within a single entity.

“From the beginning of designing Danantara, we considered that there must be a separation of risk between SOE management and investment. Because, by nature, investments can either fail or succeed,” said Dony.

According to him, without such separation, investment failures could directly impact the performance of the state-owned companies that serve as the backbone of the national economy.

“You can imagine that if we invest and the investment fails, it could drag down the SOEs. That is why from the start, we designed it to be split,” Dony added.