Prabowo Reveals Source of Funding for Indonesia's Earthquake and Forest Fire Disaster Response

Jakarta - President Prabowo Subianto has claimed that the government’s ability to deploy hundreds of helicopters, aircraft, heavy equipment and thousands of personnel to handle various natural disasters is inseparable from the results of closing budget leaks and eradicating corruption.

The statement was made by Prabowo when discussing the handling of a number of natural disasters that have occurred recently, from Aceh to East Nusa Tenggara (NTT), during the launch of the 100 GWp solar power plant programme, as quoted from the Presidential Secretariat’s YouTube channel on Tuesday (25/8/2026).

“How can we now overcome problems, have hundreds of helicopters, be able to handle heavy equipment if we do not have money. Where does that money come from? That money comes from what we have saved, from the corruption that has been going on all this time. We have stopped those leaks,” said Prabowo, quoted on Thursday (26/10/2026).

However, Prabowo considers the results achieved so far to be insufficient. He stressed that the government must still work harder to ensure every rupiah of state money is used effectively and on target.

“We are not satisfied yet. We must be even harder in managing all finances,” he asserted.

On that occasion, Prabowo also touched on the government’s efforts to deal with the impacts of El Niño and various other disaster threats. He said he had carried out direct checks in a number of regions to ensure inter-agency coordination was running effectively.

Based on his monitoring, the synergy between regional governments, ministries/agencies, the Indonesian National Armed Forces (TNI), the Indonesian National Police (Polri), the National Disaster Management Agency (BNPB), the Ministry of Environment, and the Ministry of Forestry was considered to be working well.

“I have travelled around to several places, I checked myself. Thank God, all elements of regional government, ministries/agencies, TNI, Polri, BNPB, Environment, Ministry of Forestry, are all working effectively,” he said.

According to Prabowo, the cross-sector coordination has begun to show results so that various disaster impacts and drought threats due to El Niño can be better mitigated.