Published on August 21, 2025, by Bisnis Indonesia
By Dionisio Damara Tonce and Dany Saputra
Bisnis.com, JAKARTA– During the House plenary session on the 2026 draft state budget held on Friday last week (15/8), President Prabowo Subianto delivered his vision of a state budget without a deficit and cited sovereign wealth fund Danantara as the key to achieving this goal.
“It is my hope, my dream, that one day, whether in 2027 or 2028, I will be able to stand before this assembly, on this podium, to announce that we have achieved a state budget with no deficit,” said the President.
According to Prabowo, Indonesia’s state-owned enterprises (SOEs) manage national assets worth $1,000 trillion. With just a 5% return on assets (ROA), SOEs should be able to contribute at least $50 billion to state revenue.
“With $50 billion, our budget won’t be in deficit,” Prabowo added.
Danantara thus comes under the spotlight, as it will ultimately manage all SOE assets. However, Danantara CEO Rosan Roeslani remained tight-lipped when asked for comment following a closed meeting with House Commission XI on Tuesday (19/8).
The meeting’s agenda was to present of Danantara’s roadmap and WP&B (work plan and budget), albeit held behind closed doors to maintain confidentiality regarding SOE strategies that could affect the market.
Although he did not comment on Danantara’s role in covering the state budget deficit, Rosan revealed that the meeting finally agreed on Danantara’s road map and WP&B.
“… so that moving forward, we can carry out investment activities, especially domestically, in line with carrying out Danantara Investment’s function,” Rosan told reporters.
Before that, Rosan expressed Danantara’s readiness to realize the government’s grand agendas when met at the Presidential Palace ahead of Indonesia’s 80th Independence Day ceremony on Sunday (17/8).
“The hope is that Danantara can make a major contribution, a positive contribution, not only to Indonesia’s economy but also in creating jobs, and certainly in ensuring sustainability and continuity in an increasingly growing economy,” he said.
Prabowo’s statement of a zero-deficit budget has elicited mixed responses. Riandy Laksono, a researcher at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), considers this target unrealistic and reminded how the government still struggles with increasing tax revenues.
The only new revenue source that could support the budget is Danantara which, while it could theoretically cover the deficit in recent years assuming a 5% ROA of around IDR 700 trillion, most of its assets consist of third-party funds and are not all productive.
If forced to deposit IDR 700 trillion each year, Danantara may resort to aggressive investment strategies and result in a crowding-out effect, a phenomena where increased government spending, and thus borrowing, results in reduced private sector activity due to raised interests.
“The obsession with zero debt resurfaces, but without an accompanying strategy or the ability to clearly explain where the revenue will come from, except from turning Danantara into the new cash cow,” Riandy said on Monday (18/8).
On the other hand, NEXT Indonesia Center director Herry Gunawan views Prabowo’s zero-deficit target in a positive view. Danantara, he said, should indeed support the state budget just as Singapore’s Temasek does.
Herry believes Danantara should provide good returns to the state through investments and asset management, not through financing or debt.
The pattern up to this point is SOEs would receive capital injections from the state whenever the government has a development agenda, and he argued this pattern should stop so that SOEs would cease to be a burden and become providers of funds instead, thus allowing the government to take on less debt for its programs.
“The biggest risk for the government from Danantara is if the management of SOEs and their investments fails to deliver adequate returns or even results in losses. As a result, the state budget would be drained to cover the shortfall, and in my view, this would be disastrous. It might even trigger a crisis,” he said.
Toto Pranoto, associate director at an SOE research group at the University of Indonesia, believes Danantara could provide significant contribution to the economy if its investments could be properly optimized.
“The problem is, until now the public has not clearly heard Danantara’s long-term and short-term plans, its strategy and action plan and activity timelines. So it’s relatively difficult for the public to monitor or evaluate without a comprehensive master plan,” he said.