Prabowo: 34 Years of Export Fraud Costs Reach Rp15,400 Trillion

JAKARTA — President Prabowo Subianto has revealed that the country’s losses due to export fraud from 1991 to 2024 are estimated at US$908 billion or around Rp15,400 trillion. ‘Over 34 years, what happened is what is called under-invoicing. Under-invoicing is actually fraud,’ Prabowo said during a speech at a plenary session of the Indonesian DPR at the Nusantara Building, MPR-DPR-DPD Complex, Jakarta, on Wednesday (20 May 2026), as reported by ANTARA on Thursday (21 May 2026). Under-counting refers to practices or errors in recording that result in figures lower than the actual amount, and transfer pricing refers to pricing policies for transactions between related parties. According to Prabowo, the fraudulent practices have occurred for years and targeted high-value commodities such as palm oil, coal, and iron alloy. ‘It is fraud on paper,’ he said. ‘We can lie at Indonesian ports. We ship 10,000 tons of coal, reported as only 5,000 tons. It can be done in Indonesia (fraud -red), but abroad (red) not, there it is recorded.’ The president noted that the government found reporting discrepancies in exports that in some cases reached up to 50 percent of the actual amount. Consequently, the government issued a regulation on governance of natural-resource commodity exports to strengthen oversight, prevent leakage, and raise state revenue. Under the regulation, one BUMN is designated as the sole exporter for several strategic commodities, namely palm oil, coal, and iron alloy.