As populist spending programs collide with a volatile global energy market and a free-falling rupiah, Indonesia’s fiscal credibility faces its most dangerous trial since the 1997 financial crisis.

The recent announcement on 5.6 percent economic growth came as little surprise after Finance Minister Purbaya Yudhi Sadewa made a similar projection in February. At first glance, the figure appears to validate President Prabowo Subianto’s economic agenda, particularly the free nutritious meal program. Yet behind the stable headline growth, macroeconomic indicators suggest the economy is becoming increasingly dependent on government spending and monetary expansion rather than healthy private sector activity.

Deputy Creative Economy Minister Irene Umar sat down with The Jakarta Post’s Maudey Khalisha to discuss the ministry’s priorities for driving growth, the need for education reform amid the rise of AI and cross-ministerial collaboration to strengthen Indonesia’s creative economy ecosystem globally.

By intervening in ride-hailing commissions, the government risks turning a flexible "bridge" into a rigid dead end for the very workers it aims to protect.

As the government intensifies its food estate ambitions in Papua, a staggering 58-to-1 military-to-insurgent ratio reveals a development strategy that prioritizes industrial expansion over the basic human rights and ancestral lands of the indigenous population.

Whether a trapdoor now opens beneath the dollar if the war ends and the Strait of Hormuz reopens is a central question for global markets.

As Indonesia chases its "Golden 2045" dreams, the tragic raid of a Yogyakarta childcare center reveals a haunting truth: our economic future is stalled by a systemic refusal to treat childcare as a public priority.

China is currently leading the energy transition in terms of competitive advantage as the Middle East crisis exposes the deep divide between petrostates and electrostates, and although Europe has begun to strategize its shift to clean power, sustained financing remains a crux.

When political systems neither collapse nor improve, they enter a state of fatigue that erodes the very possibility of reform. Indonesia has transitioned from the explosive ruptures of 1998 to a modern era of managed stagnation, leaving a generation to navigate a democracy that functions as a procedure but fails as a promise.

Prabowo’s speech is direct and simple about the key elements that ASEAN must retain to keep the organization relevant now and in the future. 

With little fanfare, Indonesia’s labor movement has joined President Prabowo Subianto’s big coalition government, giving it an inside track in the corridors of power to fight for its interests. Although some might argue that it has been co-opted to blunt the movement.

By attempting to screen who qualifies for protection, the government risks transforming itself from a guardian of liberty into a gatekeeper for rights violators.

Today’s emissions choices will determine how many more may face dangerous heatwaves this century.

Cooperation between Southeast Asia and Latin America matters, as both regions face similar pressures related to sustainable development, biodiversity protection and green industrialization.

Indonesia has built a sophisticated carbon market on paper, but without a tighter cap and a real price floor, it remains a system for recording emissions rather than reducing them.

While Indonesia’s macroeconomic indicators signal stability, a deepening governance asymmetry risks turning a temporary K-shaped recovery into a permanent structural divide.

We offer a paradigm shift: from managing conflict to preventing conflict through shared prosperity models. 

President Prabowo Subianto’s push to slash ride-hailing platform commissions has sparked growing concerns over the sustainability of Indonesia’s digital economy, with critics warning that the policy could weaken the very ecosystem it aims to protect.

Disunity has held back ASEAN from making progress on many fronts, particularly resolving the persistent issues in its backyard, and the same could also apply to the Prabowo administration's foreign policy stance as regards the bloc: Perhaps it is simply not the time for Indonesia to take up the regional mantle.

When one looks at Chinese household consumption per capita alongside comparable countries in terms of their postwar growth “take-off time,” the picture changes.

As Indonesia approaches a demographic crossroads, the decision to delay marriage and parenthood is less a private preference and more a rational response to a society that has yet to build a support system for the modern family.

Entering university is not an act of choice, but a negotiation with the system since the very beginning  

Indonesia has spent a decade teaching the world that it controls the supply of nickel, palm oil, and now renewable electricity. The harder question is whether Jakarta can also set the rules by which those products are sold.

As the government seeks to shore up fiscal stability amid slowing tax revenue and rising spending pressures, it is turning to controversial new revenue measures, including imposing VAT on toll roads and removing tax exemptions for EV. These policies could slow adoption even as the country pushes electrification to reduce reliance on costly fuel imports.

Policy debates around tobacco control objectives are framed increasingly in terms of nicotine elimination rather than eliminating harmful exposure to smoke. 

It's time to stop the false solutions and return the power of natural resource management to the hands of the people.  

The government's choice to respond to uncomfortable public statements with police reports and takedown requests only proves the shrinking space for freedom of expression.