Indonesia’s Forest Area Enforcement Task Force has reclaimed state assets valued at approximately Rp370 trillion (US$21.65 billion) since operations commenced in February 2025. That is according to President Prabowo Subianto, who spoke about the crackdown during a high-profile handover at the Attorney General’s Office last Friday.
The figure represents nearly 10 per cent of Indonesia’s national budget, a scale that President Prabowo described as the direct result of 14 months of coordinated enforcement across the country’s illegally occupied forest zones. The task force, established by presidential regulation in January 2025, was initially mandated to recover one million hectares of forest land and has since exceeded that target by more than 400 per cent.
The enforcement drive has recovered 5,888,260 hectares from illegal palm oil operations and an additional 10,297 hectares from mining activities within classified forest areas. The latest Phase VI handover formally returned more than 254,000 hectares to the Ministry of Forestry, with the sixth phase alone accounting for Rp336 trillion of the cumulative total.
Attorney General ST Burhanuddin, serving as First Deputy Chair of the PKH Task Force Steering Committee, confirmed the precise figure: “We have secured state assets amounting to Rp371,100,411,043,235,” he said, presenting the breakdown across six separate recovery phases.
The scale of the recovery was made visible at the Attorney General’s complex, where Rp11.4 trillion in cash was arranged in stacks of Rp100,000 banknotes nearly three metres high, forming a wall-like backdrop. President Prabowo toured the display alongside Defence Minister Sjafrie Sjamsoeddin and Finance Minister Purbaya Yudhi Sadewa before delivering his address.
The funds are earmarked for the state treasury and sit alongside more than Rp1.14 trillion (US$66.6 million) in environmental fines collected from palm oil and mining companies. Administrative fines have been collected from 20 palm oil companies and one nickel mining operator since February 2025, totalling more than Rp2.34 trillion.
Seized plantation land has been transferred primarily to PT Agrinas Palma Nusantara, a state-owned enterprise converted specifically to absorb reclaimed assets and backed by a Rp8 trillion (US$485.5 million) capital injection from the Ministry of Finance. Two sister entities, PT Agrinas Pangan Nusantara and PT Agrinas Jaladri Nusantara, have been positioned alongside it to manage the reclaimed estate under state control.
President Prabowo framed the recovery in terms of its national development dividend, telling the ceremony that Rp370 trillion would fund renovating and digitising every school in Indonesia and repairing more than 500,000 homes for low-income families. “The law is a primary instrument to safeguard the nation’s wealth. Without it, people cannot prosper,” he said.
Civil society observers have raised significant concerns about the campaign’s execution, documenting patterns of selective enforcement in which smallholder farmers and Indigenous communities have been displaced, whilst corporate operators settled by surrendering land with no criminal prosecution filed. Ahmad Zazali, head of the Centre for Law and Conflict Resolution, known as Puraka, told Mongabay the underlying framing remains narrowly financial: “The debate is about economics — how much the state has lost. Even that raises questions, because can those losses really be recovered?”
Surambo, of the Indonesian environmental group Walhi, argued that the task force’s mandate under presidential regulation explicitly includes ecological restoration, a requirement he said has been entirely subordinated to asset recovery. “To date, the task force has seized millions of hectares, but ecological restoration has been neglected… administrative fines and land takeover are being carried out, but restoration is not,” he told Mongabay.
The enforcement campaign carries direct implications for global forest commodity supply chains, with illegal palm oil cultivation inside Indonesia’s classified forest zones estimated at 3.37 million hectares, an area larger than Belgium. Indonesia holds a “standard risk” designation under the EUDR’s global benchmarking system, a classification Wood Central reported when the EU country rankings were published in May 2025, requiring physical verification of 3 per cent of all Indonesian products entering the EU.
The Indonesian Ministry of Forestry has separately signed an agreement with the UNDP to develop a second phase of GCF REDD+ Result-Based Payment funding ahead of full EUDR application in December 2026. Attorney General Burhanuddin confirmed criminal prosecution remains on the table for any company that refuses to cooperate or fails to pay.
