Indonesia Finds Transfer Pricing at All Top 10 Palm Oil Exporters
Jakarta Globe (25/05/2026) - Jakarta. Finance Minister Purbaya Yudhi Sadewa says a government review of Indonesia’s 10 largest crude palm oil exporters finds all of them engaged in suspected transfer pricing practices, potentially causing trillions of rupiah in state revenue losses.
Purbaya said the findings came from a random review of major palm oil companies, although he did not disclose the names of the firms involved.
“I took the 10 largest companies. All of them were doing it,” Purbaya told reporters after a coordination meeting with lawmakers at the parliament complex in Jakarta.
Transfer pricing refers to the practice in which exporters sell commodities to affiliated trading companies overseas at artificially low prices before the products are resold to final buyers at much higher market prices. The mechanism can reduce export taxes, corporate income taxes and foreign exchange earnings recorded in Indonesia.
According to Purbaya, the preliminary sample alone indicated potential losses of at least $88 million (Rp 1.56 trillion), although he said the actual figure could be far higher because the review covered only a limited number of transactions.
“If the random sample already shows this pattern across 10 companies, then it is likely happening much more broadly,” he said.
The allegations form part of the Indonesian government’s broader scrutiny of natural resource export governance, particularly practices such as under-invoicing and trade misinvoicing that can reduce tax revenues, export duties and foreign exchange inflows.
Purbaya previously described a trading pattern in which Indonesian crude palm oil exports were first routed through intermediaries in Singapore before being shipped to the United States.
According to him, export prices reported from Indonesia to Singapore were significantly lower than the subsequent selling prices from Singapore to the United States, causing Indonesia’s officially recorded export values to appear artificially low.
“The price from Indonesia to Singapore was only about half of the price from Singapore to the United States,” Purbaya said during the Jogja Financial Festival last week.
He said the practice directly reduced Indonesia’s export tax revenues, income tax collection and export foreign exchange earnings.
The findings come as President Prabowo Subianto’s administration moves to tighten oversight of strategic commodity exports through the establishment of Danantara Sumberdaya Indonesia, a state-owned export management body operating under sovereign wealth fund Danantara Indonesia.
Under the new system, exports of strategic commodities such as crude palm oil, coal, iron and ferroalloys will gradually be centralized under a single export management entity.
Prabowo last week said stricter state oversight of natural resource exports could help Indonesia prevent revenue leakages worth as much as $150 billion annually. He also claimed fraudulent export practices had caused cumulative state losses of around $343 billion over the past 22 years.
The government hopes the new export governance mechanism will improve transparency, reduce under-invoicing and ensure more export proceeds flow back into Indonesia’s domestic financial system.