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View all search resultsPrabowo downplays impact of rupiah fall on households
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President Prabowo Subianto delivers a speech to mark the launch of a rural cooperative under the Red and White Cooperatives Program (KDMP) in Nganjuk Regency, East Java, on May 16, 2026. (Antara/Presidential Secretariat)
P
resident Prabowo Subianto has downplayed the depreciation of the rupiah with statements economists say may send a dangerous signal to the market, potentially dealing a further blow to the currency.
Prabowo, during a visit to Nganjuk in East Java, implied in a speech that the rupiah’s weak exchange rate against the United States dollar had no serious effect on the livelihoods of ordinary people.
“Every so often [some say] that Indonesia will collapse, it will become chaotic, right? The rupiah like this, the dollar like that. People in the villages do not use the dollar, correct? [...] Many countries are in panic; Indonesia is still okay,” Prabowo declared on Saturday.
Whatever the rupiah was worth in dollar terms was only “a headache for the people who go abroad a lot”, he added in a separate speech on the same day, causing laughter in the audience when he pointed to his ex-wife Siti Hediati Hariyadi and several cabinet members as cases in point.
Prabowo himself has made foreign policy a hallmark of his presidency and visited dozens of countries – many several times – since taking office in October 2024.
“Believe that our economy is strong, our fundamentals are strong, whatever people say. Indonesia is strong. Believe in our power, believe in our people,” urged Prabowo.
The rupiah has been on a downward slope since the United States and Israel launched a war against Iran in late February and by the end of April had breached its historic low of Rp 17,300 per dollar recorded during the Asian Financial Crisis in 1998.
