President Says Under-Invoicing Practices Cost the State Rp15,400 Trillion

Jakarta — The President of the Republic of Indonesia has revealed that state losses from export fraud from 1991 to 2024 are estimated at 908 billion US dollars, or about Rp15,400 trillion. The fraud includes under-invoicing, where importers or exporters deliberately report the value of goods on invoices as lower than the actual transaction price. ‘In 34 years, what has happened? What has happened is what we call under-invoicing. Under-invoicing is actually fraud,’ President Prabowo said during the plenary session of the House of Representatives at the Nusantara Building, Parliament Complex, Senayan, Central Jakarta, on Wednesday (20 May 2026). Meanwhile, under-counting refers to practices or errors in recording that yield quantities lower than the actual figure, and transfer pricing refers to the policy of setting prices for transactions between parties with special relationships. According to him, the fraudulent practice has persisted for years. The practice targets high-value commodities, such as palm oil, coal, and an iron alloy. ‘That is paper fraud,’ said President Prabowo. He said the practice can be detected through official records at the destination port or through official records of UN bodies under the United Nations (UN). ‘We can lie at Indonesian ports. We ship 10,000 tonnes of coal, but report only 5,000 tonnes. It can be done in Indonesia (cheating), but there (abroad) it cannot; there it is recorded,’ said Prabowo. He noted that the government found export-reporting gaps, in some cases up to 50 percent of the actual situation. As such, the government issued a government regulation on the governance of export of natural resource commodities to strengthen oversight, prevent leakage, and increase state revenue. In the regulation, state-owned enterprises are designated as the sole exporters for several strategic commodities, namely palm oil, coal, and an iron alloy.