JAKARTA: Indonesia will channel US$20 billion in budget savings to its newly created Danantara investment body to help finance 20 high-impact national projects, President Prabowo Subianto said on Monday (Feb 24).
The president said Danantara would invest the sum into projects in downstream nickel, bauxite, copper, artificial intelligence, oil refineries, petrochemical plants, food production, aquaculture, and renewable energy. He didn’t give a timeline for the investments.
Prabowo was speaking at the presidential palace in Jakarta before a group of high-profile political and business guests, including people he described as "Danantara’s heads.”
Prior to his speech, he signed a decree on the creation of Danantara that included appointments to its supervisory and executive boards.
Prabowo views Danantara as a key undertaking in his aims to return Indonesia to the 8% economic growth not seen since the mid-1990s during the era of authoritarian ruler Suharto.
Working against him is flagging consumption in the world’s fourth most populous nation and relatively meagre foreign investment.
The president described Danantara, which will take over management of Indonesia’s dozens of state-owned enterprises, as a sovereign wealth fund, saying it would act as a development tool to change the way Indonesia manages its wealth for the welfare of its people.
Prabowo didn’t elaborate on precisely where Danantara’s initial investment cash would come from.
An ongoing review of the state budget was initially meant to reallocate about $20 billion to the president’s priority projects such as the distribution of free lunches and the construction of more public housing. - Bloomberg
