Indonesia capped ride-hailing commissions at 8% on May Day — a 60% drop in platform revenue per trip — while sovereign wealth fund Danantara simultaneously holds stakes in the companies absorbing that shock. The state that sets the price is also a co-owner of the business that has to live with it. Prabowo applied the Pertamina model to platforms: making the Indonesian state simultaneously the regulator and the co-shareholder changes what it means to invest in Southeast Asian tech.
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Miguel Santos: On May 1st, 2026, President Prabowo stood before tens of thousands of workers at Jakarta’s National Monument and signed a decree cutting ride-hailing platform commissions from 20 percent to 8. The drivers had asked for 10. He gave them 8. That is not a rounding error. That is industrial policy.
Emily Chen: The platforms’ revenue per ride just fell sixty percent. And the entity that now holds stakes in the companies absorbing that shock is the same government that wrote the law. Indonesia just restructured the value capture of its entire platform economy — without calling it nationalization. This week on SEA Weekly, we follow the money.
Emily Chen: Welcome to SEA Weekly, the podcast analyzing the most significant developments in Southeast Asia’s digital economy, industrial policy, and financial infrastructure. I’m Emily Chen, and joining me today from Jakarta is Miguel Santos — SEA Weekly contributor covering industrial policy and capital markets. Miguel, welcome.
Miguel Santos: Thanks, Emily. Good to be here.
Emily Chen: This is Episode 10. Miguel — give us the central thesis.
Miguel Santos: Prabowo applied the Pertamina model to platforms. By making the Indonesian state simultaneously the regulator and the co-shareholder — through Danantara — he changed what it means to invest in Southeast Asian tech. The investment thesis for Grab and GoTo has to be rewritten.
Emily Chen: Full analysis and sources are linked in the post. Subscribe and share it with someone who is still reading this as a labor story.
Miguel Santos: See you next week.