Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto laid out new regulations before parliament to centralize exports of strategic natural resource commodities through PT Danantara Sumber Daya Indonesia, a new state-owned company under the executive branch-run sovereign wealth fund Danantara, Reuters reported May 20. The initial covered sectors include crude palm oil, coal, iron and ferroalloys, with oil and gas excluded; affected exporters must begin filing export documentation with the agency on June 1, and natural resource exporters must keep 100% of export revenues in state-owned banks.

Subianto is framing the controls as a response to underinvoicing, transfer pricing and weak oversight of natural resource earnings, claiming tighter monitoring could recover $150 billion annually, an amount equal to more than half of Indonesia's annual goods exports. The policy also comes as the rupiah trades near record lows against the U.S. dollar, making coal, palm oil, nickel and other export earnings more important sources of foreign currency as Indonesia faces outflow pressure, higher dollar demand and rising costs for imports priced in dollars such as fuel.