Prabowo Reveals the Reason for the Limited Teacher Salary Budget: The State Loses Rp2.500 Trillion per Year

BANGKALAN - Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto revealed that the large leakage of state revenues was one of the factors that made the government budget, including for the improvement of teachers' welfare and civil servants, not optimal.

Prabowo said the potential loss of the state due to the leak reached around Rp. 2,500 trillion every year, so that the fiscal space for various priority programs was limited.

This was conveyed by Prabowo when giving a speech at the closing of the National Congress of Alim Ulama and the 2026 Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) Grand Conference in Bangkalan, East Java, Tuesday, June 23.

"I want to convey in this forum, because I want NU brothers as leaders, as scholars, as teachers, as guides for the people. Must understand, why can't the teacher's salary be good? Why can't the civil servant's salary be good? Why is the budget always lacking? Because there is no money, it is taken away," said Prabowo.

Prabowo assessed that the leak was triggered, among other things, by the practice of reporting transactions that were not in accordance with the law, including under invoicing in commodity trading activities.

"The businessmen are lying. He said he sold 1,000 tons, he reported only 500 tons. That means the country loses," he said.

According to Prabowo, based on the calculations of experts, the potential loss of the state due to various forms of leakage reaches around 150 billion US dollars or equivalent to Rp. 2,500 trillion per year.

"Brothers, our leak, we count, the experts count now is about 150 billion (USD) every year, Rp. 2,500 trillion every year," he said.

He emphasized that the government is currently taking various steps to improve governance to close the leakage gap. One of them is through strengthening the export system of strategic commodities with a one-stop scheme through PT Danantara Sumber Daya Indonesia (PT DSI) to prevent the practice of manipulating trade reports.

In addition, the government also evaluated State-Owned Enterprises (BUMN) by closing around 240 BUMN which were considered to continue to lose money.

"Brothers and sisters, and I am fixing all of this," said Prabowo.