Forum: Criticism of Danantara should consider a different context

I refer to the article by Mr Dipo Satria Ramli, “Indonesia’s Danantara: Sovereign Wealth Or Sovereign Risk?” (April 17).

Though carefully argued, a few points deserve direct response.

On transparency and consolidated financial statements: The concern is legitimate, but it mistakes incomplete consolidation for an absence of oversight. Danantara’s finances and operations – as chief executive Rosan Roeslani has publicly committed – are already subject to the state auditor BPK, the Anti-Corruption Commission KPK, and the Attorney-General’s Office. Credible transparency is about sequencing, not just speed. The criticism should demand acceleration, not declare failure.

On stabilising stock prices of state-owned enterprises (SOEs): When Danantara buys undervalued shares in enterprises that belong to the Indonesian people, it is not distorting the market. It is defending national assets from irrational short-term volatility, precisely what Hong Kong’s monetary authority did in 1998, deploying US$15 billion to defeat speculative attacks on its own market. What Singapore’s Temasek does routinely. What is needed is transparent disclosure of goal, frequency and guard rails. Not whether to protect Indonesia’s assets, but rather how to do it accountably.

On mission creep: Danantara was designed with a dual mandate – restructuring SOEs while mobilising international capital into national priority sectors. That is not creep. That is the architecture. It is already co-financing large-scale waste-to-energy projects and investing in integrated farming that supports free meals for schools and the national food programme, connecting small farmers to industrial-scale supply chains for generations to come. Sovereign partnerships span four countries – Qatar, Australia, China and Japan – with Oracle committing to Indonesia’s digital infrastructure. Indonesia’s total investment in 2025 hit US$114.4 billion (S$146 billion), growing 12.7 per cent year on year, creating 2.71 million jobs. It is better to import capital that creates wealth than to import goods that create dependency.

Mr Dipo presents a binary: sovereign wealth or sovereign risk. Mr Jim Collins called this the “Tyranny of the OR”. Great nations embrace the “Genius of the AND” – accountability and ambition, transparency and transformation. Purpose and risk.

My train of thought is echoed by one of Indonesia’s most seasoned macro-economists. When I had lunch with him, I asked what bothered him most about foreign commentary on Danantara, and he didn’t hesitate. “They keep using,” he said, stabbing his nasi goreng with a fork, “a map that expired before Google was invented.”

He meant intellectual maps. Printed before China’s state-guided capitalism built the world’s second-largest economy in less than two decades. Before South Korea used the wreckage of the Asian monetary crisis to build one of the most competitive economies on earth. Maps drawn before all that tend to produce the wrong answers for today’s questions. And outdated analysis, no matter how elegantly written, is not merely misleading. It is irrelevant.

Danantara is Indonesia’s “Good to Great” bet. A bet that over 280 million people deserve more than the economy they had before. Wealth creation at this scale has never been, and will never be, safe. But safety was never the point. The point – the only point that history will remember – is whether the purpose was worth it.

Korea in 1999 did not ask Moody’s for permission to rebuild. It rebuilt. The ratings followed.

Mr Dipo’s map just needs to catch up – from one that expired in 1997, to one drawn on Feb 24, 2025, the day Danantara was born.

Dr Farid Subkhan
Perbanas Institute Jakarta