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View all search results‘Paralyzed’ businesses reel from $4b losses due to Sumatra floods
Small businesses in Aceh, North Sumatra and West Sumatra have watched as the recent flooding swept away their incomes along with roads, utilities and other essentials, including access to food.
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A man sits atop logs carried by floodwaters on Nov. 28, 2025, near a house surrounded by mud and debris in South Tapanuli regency, one of the worst-affected regions in North Sumatra hit by floods and landslides due to Tropical Cyclone Senyar on Nov. 26.
(Antara/Yudi Manar)
A
hmad Arifin Rambe, a food distributor in Padang Sidempuan, is just one of the small-scale traders who have been devastated by the recent flooding.
“Everything is paralyzed, completely paralyzed. We have stopped operating since the first day of the disaster. It’s been seven days now,” he said on Monday.
Supply chains have collapsed across northern Sumatra following the flash floods and landslides triggered by Tropical Cyclone Senyar, a rare equatorial storm system that formed in the Malacca Strait overnight on Nov. 25 and made landfall in North Sumatra early on Nov. 26, and then swept into the neighboring provinces of Aceh and West Sumatra.
Across the three provinces, small businesses have shuttered, farmers have watched their crops wash away and thousands of families have been cut off from fuel, food, electricity and clean water supplies.
The Center of Economic and Law Studies (Celios) has estimated the disaster could inflict losses of roughly Rp 68.67 trillion (US$4.1 billion) nationwide, or around 0.29 percent of GDP. The modeling it used also captures spillover damage, as transportation disruption in the affected areas is likely to choke off economic activity in other regions.
Projected material losses from destroyed homes, collapsed bridges, damaged roads, lost household income and ruined farmland total Rp 2.2 trillion in Aceh, Rp 2.07 trillion in North Sumatra and Rp 2.01 trillion in West Sumatra, according to Celios data.
Back in Padang Sidempuan, a city that serves as a vital artery linking North Sumatra capital Medan and West Sumatra capital Padang, Ahmad said his outgoing shipments usually reached up to Rp 4 million per day.
