As the government scrambles to shore up tax and excise revenues, a wave of corruption arrests targeting tax and customs officials has exposed deep governance problems within Indonesia’s revenue-collecting agencies. The Corruption Eradication Commission’s (KPK) recent raids have prompted Finance Minister Purbaya Yudhi Sadewa to carry out large-scale bureaucratic rotations at both the tax and customs offices. Yet questions remain over whether these measures can deliver lasting reform or meaningfully improve revenue collection.

An aggressive growth target may lift headline GDP, but it could also inflate asset prices, strain the state budget and erode investor confidence in fiscal policy. 

AI's rising tide no longer lifts all boats, and those that are sailing along smoothly one quarter could find themselves sunk the next.

As trillions in state funds remain unrecovered, Indonesia’s path to sustainable growth hinges on moving beyond 'business as usual' toward a rigorous, mandatory framework of institutional control and proactive intervention

In today's Middle East, diplomacy is no longer a path to peace but a high-stakes holding pattern—a mechanism designed not to build trust, but to buy the most fragile strategic asset of all: time.

A better approach would not promote any version of competition, but rather encourage firms to compete and succeed in ways that produce broad-based benefits.

Learning from the Epstein scandal, Indonesian business needs to shift toward enhanced, human rights-based due diligence from the conventional know-your-customer principle.

Eco-democracy seeks to create harmony between humanity and the environment, positioning ecological health as a core component of democratic rights and a vital alternative to the laissez-faire economic models. 

The country’s long-running food estate ambition is entering a new and larger phase with the conversion of vast forest areas in South Papua into non-forest zones, or areas for other uses (APL). Initially framed as a strategy to achieve rice self-sufficiency, the program has now expanded under President Prabowo Subianto to also pursue energy security, with palm oil positioned as a key commodity to serve both goals.

While such a neo-statist development approach is within the global zeitgeist, there seems to be doubt about it working in this country.

Russian diplomacy will continue to focus on deepening a trust-based dialogue with Indonesia and other ASEAN member states, grounded in respect for international law, mutual interests, the principles of consensus, and noninterference in internal affairs.

World leaders are making their trips to China as a kind of response to US President Donald Trump's unfriendly attitudes.

Financial inclusion was supposed to be a lifeline; instead, it has become a dragnet. From predatory lending apps to algorithms that harvest "poverty as spectacle," the digital economy is transforming human desperation into a high-growth market.

Indonesia's proposed law against disinformation and foreign propaganda, which suggests cross-border applicability in the ongoing clampdown on government critics, could throw a spanner in the works of its bilateral relationship with Australia.

Indonesia's newly announced dynamic resilience doctrine necessitates wider naval reach, but without rigorous planning and fiscal discipline, its blue-water ambitions will remain merely symbolic.

As the era of guaranteed American multilateralism fades, a new global architecture is rising from the spirit of Bandung: NEFOS 2.0—a strategic coalition defined not by ideological alignment, but by collective technological sovereignty and distributed economic power.

The appointment of Thomas Djiwandono, a nephew of President Prabowo Subianto, as deputy governor of Bank Indonesia, has raised the specter of nepotism making a comeback in Indonesian politics. 

Whether through corruption, a lack of risk assessment or a desire for short-term financial gains, the "danger zones" are wiped off the map until the earth reclaims them.

To turn Indonesia’s natural wealth into resilient prosperity, we must move beyond the vocabulary of net-zero and close the critical gap between ambitious policy and the human capability to execute it.

Even though board members are claimed to be independent, they are often friends, associates or well-wishers of the owners and CEOs.

Social protection and education policies must be integrated to ensure that the most vulnerable do not fall through the cracks and end up being denied their fundamental, constitutionally guaranteed right through systemic exclusion.

Taxing extreme wealth is not only necessary to prevent 21st-century Caesarism but also essential to saving democracy.

That President Prabowo himself felt compelled to personally justify the decision, after it had been made, already tells us what this membership really is.

Indonesia is facing a credibility test. And credibility, once questioned, is costly to rebuild.

Morgan Stanley Capital International (MSCI) has temporarily frozen Indonesia’s February market status review and warned of a potential downgrade from Emerging Market to Frontier Market, citing persistent structural and governance weaknesses in the equity market. Key concerns include opaque ownership structures, limited disclosure of ultimate beneficial owners, and significant price distortions in several heavily weighted stocks, particularly conglomerate- and state-owned enterprise-linked names, which have pushed the Jakarta Composite Index (JCI) higher without corresponding improvements in fundamentals.

In recent years, we have seen the civic space shrinking, undermining the quality of democracy. The press can help to stop and reverse the trend.

As Indonesia invests in high-speed rail, a quieter revolution in micro-mobility and former rail corridors could shape how growth, jobs and everyday life unfold along Java’s emerging mega-urban corridor.