Jakarta Seizes the Dip: Why Indonesia Wants to Buy Back Its Own Star Banking Stocks

JAKARTA, Investortrust.id — When the stock market hands you lemons, sometimes the best move is to buy back the grove.

That is the current playbook circulating through the upper echelons of Jakarta’s economic leadership. Dony Oskaria, the Chief Operating Officer of Danantara—Indonesia’s newly established super-holding body tasked with managing state-owned assets—and Head of the State-Owned Enterprises (SOE) Regulatory Agency, is signaling a aggressive push to buy back public shares of the country’s top state-owned banks. The reason? A stubborn disconnect between soaring balance sheets and a lagging stock market.

The banks in question belong to Himbara, the Association of State-Owned Banks, an acronym used locally to describe the formidable quartet of state-controlled lenders that anchor the Indonesian financial system: Bank Mandiri, Bank Rakyat Indonesia (BRI), Bank Negara Indonesia (BNI), and Bank Tabungan Negara (BTN). Together, they command a massive market share of Southeast Asia’s largest economy. Yet, despite their systemic dominance, their equities have recently taken a bruising on the Indonesia Stock Exchange (IDX).

The Value Disconnect

This market anomaly has caught the attention of policymakers who see an opportunity for a profitable intervention. The move highlights a broader trend in emerging markets where global macro jitters often trigger capital flight, dragging down high-performing domestic enterprises regardless of their actual fiscal health. For long-term sovereign investors, these market inefficiencies offer a rare window to consolidate ownership at a discount.

"Because the stock prices are low, it is highly profitable for us to step in, given their excellent fundamentals," Dony told reporters at the Parliament building in Jakarta on Wednesday, June 10, 2026. "As I noted recently, our banks’ fundamentals are currently in their best shape in history. Anyone can verify this; these are publicly traded institutions."

For Dony, deploying corporate cash to repurchase shares isn't an act of desperation to prop up a failing sector—it is a textbook value play.

"Essentially, a buyback is a normal corporate mechanism executed by the owners of a company when the stock price fails to align with its intrinsic value," he added.

Beyond Banking

According to Danantara’s internal metrics, the phenomenon of underappreciated value is not isolated to the financial sector. Indonesia’s massive infrastructure state enterprises, which have spent the last decade building out the archipelago’s toll roads, ports, and airports, are facing similar market skepticism despite promising growth trajectories.

"It’s a missed opportunity otherwise," Dony explained. "Look at the numbers. Our companies are strong, our banking sector is robust, and our infrastructure performance is solid. Yet the equity prices don't reflect that."

He challenged skeptical public investors to scrutinize the latest audited balance sheets of these public lenders, emphasizing that their liquidity and capital adequacy ratios are exceptionally resilient. "You can look directly at the books; they are in an extraordinary position. If the stock prices dip, it’s a shame to waste it. We might as well take them back."

Political Alignment

The buyback momentum is gaining rapid political traction. The day before Dony’s remarks, on Tuesday, June 9, 2026, the Deputy Speaker of Indonesia's House of Representatives (DPR), Sufmi Dasco Ahmad, held a high-level strategy session. The meeting brought together the chief executives of the Himbara banks, Mr. Oskaria, and Minister of the State Secretariat Prasetyo Hadi to iron out the logistics of the market intervention.

"We discussed how, at the right opportunistic moment, we should launch a buyback of these shares on the open market," Mr. Ahmad said at the parliamentary complex, endorsing the view that state funds are best spent reinvesting in their own high-performing assets.

With both political leaders and sovereign asset managers singing from the same hymn sheet, Jakarta appears poised to trigger the buyback blitz, betting big that the market will eventually have to acknowledge the math on the ground.