Prabowo criticises businesspeople who "store" wealth abroad

Jakarta (ANTARA) - President Prabowo Subianto criticised a number of national businesspeople who continue to store their capital and business proceeds abroad after receiving various business facilitation from the government.

“We give mining concessions, we give plantation concessions, we also give credit from state banks, people’s banks, but when they succeed, their business proceeds are not placed in Indonesia,” said President Prabowo in a YouTube broadcast by the State Secretariat in Jakarta on Wednesday.

The President emphasised that he will not allow the practice of transferring national wealth abroad to continue during his administration.

According to him, all sources of natural wealth and national economic strength should be in the hands of the nation itself so that the benefits can be directly enjoyed by the Indonesian people.

“The Indonesian nation does not want to be someone else’s rice field, does not want to be someone else’s plantation, the Indonesian nation wants Indonesia’s wealth to be in the hands and enjoyed by the Indonesian people,” the President stressed.

Prabowo stated that he will not tolerate parties who lack patriotic spirit to be within his government’s circle if they prefer to serve foreign interests.

This criticism was delivered amid the government’s commitment to accelerate the downstreaming programme as the main path towards prosperity and more independent national economic sovereignty.

The event marked the start of construction of several strategic facilities in the energy, mineral, and agriculture sectors.

The project work includes the construction of a gasoline refinery in Cilacap and Dumai, as well as facilities to process coal into Dimethyl Ether (DME) in Tanjung Enim.

In the event, the government also outlined the scope of projects that will run in parallel, involving several strategic SOEs such as Pertamina, MIND ID, Krakatau Steel, and PTPN.