President Prabowo Subianto returned to Jakarta on Saturday from a three-day state visit to France, bringing home a clutch of commercial agreements spanning energy security, trade and defence cooperation. The Paris trip, which ran from Tuesday to Thursday, produced four commercial deals and underscored the diplomatic energy Prabowo has poured into courting European partners since taking office, even as his economic instincts at home have pointed firmly toward state control.
That domestic turn has been the more consequential story. In recent weeks Prabowo told lawmakers in Jakarta that the government would take direct control of the country's commodity exports, beginning with palm oil, thermal coal and nickel — markets in which Indonesia is a dominant or leading global supplier. The move would route the sale of the nation's most valuable raw materials through the state, a sweeping assertion of authority that critics have likened to the centralised economic command of Indonesia's authoritarian past.
The logic Prabowo has offered is one of leverage and value. Indonesia has long chafed at exporting raw commodities cheaply only to import finished goods made from them, and the government argues that controlling exports will let it capture more of the value chain and use its market dominance as a strategic tool. The nickel sector, central to electric-vehicle supply chains, has already been the testing ground for an earlier ban on raw-ore exports designed to force processing onshore.
The approach carries real risks. Concentrating commodity sales in state hands invites concerns about efficiency, corruption and the deterrence of foreign investors wary of political interference, and it has unsettled trading partners who depend on predictable access to Indonesian supply. International buyers and the global firms that have built businesses around Indonesian palm oil, coal and nickel are watching closely for how far the centralisation will actually go.
The military dimension of Prabowo's agenda has advanced in parallel. This month he presided over the handover of new Rafale fighter jets, Dassault Falcon aircraft and an Airbus A400M transport to the Indonesian Air Force, part of a modernisation drive he has tied to national sovereignty. The French deals struck in Paris fit a pattern of deepening defence and commercial ties with Europe even as Jakarta guards its economic independence.
Taken together, the foreign deal-making and the domestic tightening sketch the shape of Prabowo's presidency: outwardly engaged and acquisitive, inwardly statist and protective of national resources. How those two impulses coexist — wooing foreign capital while asserting state command over the commodities that capital wants — will define the economic record of his term.