Prabowonomics: Wealth Funds, School Meals, and Village Co-ops — and the Price Indonesia Might Pay

In January, global leaders, CEOs, and policymakers once again gathered in the exclusive Swiss town of Davos for the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum. More than 2,700 participants from over 130 countries attended, including around 50 heads of state and government and over 1,000 corporate leaders. Davos remains the place where political ambition meets financial reality, and where leaders attempt to sell their national narratives to global capital.

One of those leaders this year was Prabowo Subianto.

While this was not Prabowo’s first invitation to Davos, it was his first appearance in a new capacity: as the eighth president of the Republic of Indonesia. The 2026 meeting marked his first major Davos keynote since taking office in October 2024, just over 15 months earlier.

In his address, Prabowo presented Indonesia as stable, resilient, and open for business. He pointed to steady post-pandemic growth averaging around five percent, foreign exchange reserves near 140 billion US dollars, and a public debt-to-GDP ratio still below 40 percent. Indonesia, he argued, was not just a land of peace and stability, but a land of opportunity.

But Prabowo did not limit himself to macroeconomic indicators.

He introduced two new ideas. The first was something he called “Greedonomics,” a term he used to describe corruption, illegal mining, rent-seeking, cartels, and unfair business practices that he believes undermine economic justice. The second was what he implicitly branded as “Prabowonomics”: his own emerging doctrine for how Indonesia’s economy would be governed under his leadership.

To understand why that speech mattered, however, it is necessary to rewind to the beginning of Prabowo’s political ascent.

The Road to Power

Prabowo Subianto won Indonesia’s presidential election on 14 February 2024, defeating Anies Baswedan and Muhaimin Iskandar, as well as Ganjar Pranowo and Mahfud MD. He ran with Gibran Rakabuming Raka, the mayor of Solo and the eldest son of then-president Joko Widodo, as his vice-presidential candidate.

With over 96 million votes, Prabowo-Gibran secured 58.59 percent of the national vote, surpassing the constitutional threshold required to avoid a second round. They also exceeded the provincial distribution requirement in more than 30 of Indonesia’s 38 provinces.

Yet the election was not without controversy.

Gibran’s candidacy required a Constitutional Court ruling that effectively lowered the minimum age for vice-presidential candidates, as long as they had previously held public office. The court at the time was headed by Anwar Usman, the president’s brother-in-law. The optics were disastrous. The ruling was widely seen as legally strained and politically engineered.

Still, Prabowo and Gibran won.

Prabowo’s path to the presidency was long and ironic. He had twice lost presidential races to Joko Widodo in 2014 and 2019, and had been one of Jokowi’s harshest critics. After losing again in 2019, Jokowi offered him the post of minister of defense. From 2019 to 2024, Prabowo transformed himself from an opposition firebrand into a loyal cabinet member.

By the end of Jokowi’s second term, hints of presidential succession had become unmistakable. In September 2023, Prabowo announced four possible vice-presidential picks, including Erick Thohir, Khofifah Indar Parawansa, Yusril Ihza Mahendra, and Gibran. Despite Gibran being under the legal age at the time, Prabowo’s coalition nominated him anyway.

The rest is history.

A Cabinet of Scale and Spending

Prabowo’s campaign was built around “Asta Cita,” eight strategic missions ranging from food and energy self-sufficiency to industrialization, human capital development, corruption eradication, and environmental harmony.

Achieving even one of these goals would have been difficult.

Prabowo attempted all eight at once.

He expanded Jokowi’s already large cabinet into one of the largest in Indonesian history: 10 coordinating ministries, 48 ministers, and 54 deputy ministers, totaling over 110 top-level political appointees.

It seemed like everyone got a slice of the pie.

For his first year in office, Prabowo announced eight priority programs:
food security, energy security, free nutritious meals, education reform, healthcare revitalization, village cooperatives, defense modernization, and global investment expansion through a new sovereign wealth fund.

The price tag was staggering.

Compared to his predecessor, Prabowo increased total spending by more than 220 trillion rupiah. The 2026 budget alone exceeds 3,800 trillion rupiah, or roughly 250 billion US dollars — about 12 percent of Indonesia’s GDP.

Prabowo is, by any serious definition, a big spender.

The Architects Behind “Prabowonomics”

Prabowonomics is not a formal theory. It is a governing style.

Prabowo is not an economist, and the real intellectual drivers of his economic direction are his ministers. The most telling signal came in 2025, when he replaced Sri Mulyani Indrawati as finance minister with Purbaya Yudhi Sadewa.

Sri Mulyani was a globally respected technocrat. She had steered Indonesia through the 2008 financial crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic. Under her leadership, deficits were pushed back below three percent of GDP after the pandemic shock, and fiscal discipline remained a core priority.

Purbaya brought a different temperament.

As former head of the Indonesian Deposit Insurance Corporation, he leaned toward aggressive growth policies. One of his first moves was shifting 200 trillion rupiah in government cash reserves from the central bank into commercial banks to boost liquidity and lending.

It was a symbolic pivot away from restraint toward stimulus.

The Three Pillars of Spending

Prabowonomics rests on three massive fiscal pillars.

The first is Danantara, Indonesia’s new sovereign wealth fund, launched in February 2025 with over 300 trillion rupiah in seed capital drawn from government equity injections and state-owned enterprises. At Davos, its chief investment officer announced plans to deploy up to 14 billion US dollars in 2026 alone into renewable energy, digital infrastructure, healthcare, and food security.

The second is the Free Nutritious Meal Program.

Originally framed as a school lunch initiative, it has since expanded to include toddlers and pregnant women. At full rollout, it is projected to cost between 120 and 150 trillion rupiah per year, making it larger than Indonesia’s entire public healthcare budget. BPJS Healthcare, by comparison, runs on roughly 100 trillion rupiah annually.

The third is Koperasi Desa Merah Putih.

The government aims to establish or revitalize over 80,000 village cooperatives — roughly one per village nationwide. These cooperatives are meant to operate across agriculture, fisheries, logistics, fertilizer distribution, small manufacturing, retail, and micro-lending. Initial financing comes from state banks, village funds, and subsidized credit lines worth tens of trillions of rupiah.

In theory, they will shorten supply chains, empower farmers, stabilize food prices, and weaken middlemen.

In practice, early pilots already show rising non-performing loans and hundreds of failed cooperatives.

Greedonomics and Reality

At Davos, Prabowo declared war on “Greedonomics.”

His government claims to have seized more than two million hectares of illegally controlled land and shut down hundreds of illegal mining operations.

Yet critics point out that many of Prabowo’s closest political allies and business supporters are themselves part of Indonesia’s entrenched oligarchic networks. Indonesian Corruption Watch has already raised concerns over selective enforcement and political favoritism.

Greedonomics risks becoming not just an economic philosophy, but a political weapon.

The Risks Beneath the Optimism

Prabowo has set extraordinary targets: eight percent annual growth, extreme poverty eradication, and a transformation of Indonesia into a global investment hub.

Indonesia has grown above seven percent only once in the last 25 years.

Meanwhile, debt interest payments already exceed 400 trillion rupiah per year.

Danantara has already deployed part of its capital into public equities rather than long-term infrastructure, raising fears that it could become a politicized trading vehicle rather than a sovereign development fund.

The Free Meal Program risks becoming a permanent fiscal sinkhole.

The village cooperatives risk becoming a nationwide patronage system.

And markets are increasingly nervous about central bank independence as Prabowo prepares to nominate the next governor of Bank Indonesia.

A Skeptical Hope

And yet.

Prabowo has done things his predecessors avoided.

He put food security back at the center of national policy.
He made child nutrition a political priority.
He confronted illegal mining and land abuse more aggressively than most previous administrations.
He tried to build long-term investment capacity.
He projected Indonesia as a serious geopolitical and economic player.

Indonesia still has a stunting rate of around 21 percent, one of the highest in Southeast Asia. Something had to be done.

But what Prabowo has done so far has not yet been shown to be worth the dollar being spent on it.

The Final Question

So there is no such thing as Prabowonomics.

There is only a massive political experiment unfolding in real time.

It blends social welfare with strategic investment, nationalism with globalization, ambition with fiscal risk.

It might succeed.

It might fail.

It might do both at the same time.

Ultimately, it will not be Davos speeches that determine Prabowo’s legacy.

It will be whether discipline, transparency, and institutional integrity survive the most expensive governing agenda in Indonesia’s modern history.

Because it is not what Prabowo says in Davos that will change his approval ratings at home.

It is what Indonesians feel in their wallets.