Purbaya Explains Why Prabowo Formed PT Danantara Sumberdaya Indonesia

JAKARTA — Finance Minister Purbaya Yudhi Sadewa recounted that the formation of PT Danantara Sumberdaya Indonesia stemmed from government findings concerning alleged under-invoicing and transfer pricing in the export of natural resource commodities (SDA). Purbaya said President Prabowo Subianto had previously discussed under-invoicing several times in cabinet meetings. According to him, the practice caused Indonesia to lose potential state revenue on a large scale. As Finance Minister, Purbaya said he immediately followed up the issue by visiting the National Single Window (NSW) under the Ministry of Finance to trace export-import data. However at that time, he said he had not received adequate answers regarding the alleged manipulation of export prices. Therefore, he formed a special team comprising a number of Finance Ministry officials tasked to conduct investigations using artificial intelligence (AI). For each company, three shipments were randomly selected to compare their export price data. From the tracing, the government found a pattern where Indonesian companies sold commodities to their subsidiaries in Singapore before ultimately shipping to the United States. According to him, the physical shipments were made directly from Indonesia to the United States, but the transactional documents were first ‘cycled’ through Singapore. He said the government subsequently used United States import data obtained through international data providers to compare Indonesia’s export prices with prices charged in the destination country. The result showed that the price of commodities sold to the United States could be up to twice the price of exports from Indonesia to Singapore. ‘The ship is the same, the volume is the same, but the price is different,’ he said.