Prabowo Considers Fuel and Work-from-Home Savings Policy Amid Middle East Conflict
President Prabowo Subianto is considering implementing policies to reduce fuel consumption as a consequence of the conflict occurring in the Middle East.
This was announced during a Full Cabinet Session at the State Palace on Friday, 13 March 2026.
In providing direction, President Prabowo stated that fuel prices could affect many matters, such as food supply, and therefore this problem must be resolved with accelerated and proactive measures, namely fuel conservation.
“We face developments occurring globally in the European and Middle Eastern regions, and this naturally impacts us because it will affect fuel prices. Fuel prices can also affect food prices. We are grateful we have already secured basic food security. Regarding fuel, we actually already have plans that we will accelerate, but we must also take proactive measures, meaning we must reduce fuel consumption. We cannot assume that whatever happens we are safe without making efforts to reduce our fuel consumption. Many countries have already taken such steps,” he explained during the Full Cabinet Session at the State Palace on Friday, 13 March 2026.
Prabowo stated that many countries have already implemented fuel conservation measures. He gave the example of Pakistan.
The Chairman General of the Gerindra Party even presented a slide showing what Pakistan had already done in response to global oil price volatility.
“This is only for comparison, so they consider this already critical, so they call it critical measures,” Prabowo explained.
He explained that Pakistan implemented policies similar to those during the Covid-19 pandemic, where private and government offices implemented work-from-home policies for 50% of their staff. Additionally, working hours were reduced to just 4 days.
“They even reduced salaries for cabinet members and parliament members, and all these salary savings were collected to help the most vulnerable and weak groups,” said Prabowo.
Furthermore, Pakistan also implemented policies to cut fuel allocation or usage for all ministries. And required 60% of government vehicles not to be used daily.
“Then, they halted all air-conditioning purchases, vehicle purchases, furniture purchases, from all government institutions for an indefinite period,” he said.
This step included reducing work visits and not using government budgets for celebrations. This also included implementation across all higher education institutions that adopted online learning.
However, according to Prabowo, this is an example that his subordinates can study for implementation domestically.
“I think we must ensure that we make savings. I believe in 2-3 years we will be very strong, but we must conserve consumption. Thus, we hope we will always ensure that our deficit does not increase. In fact, my aspiration is that if possible, we have no deficit,” said Prabowo.