Indonesia hits the brakes on Prabowo’s mega order of Indian lorries

[JAKARTA] Indonesia is halting an order for 105,000 lorries from India’s Tata Motors and Mahindra & Mahindra following a pushback from policymakers.

Imports of the vehicles, a mix of 4x4s and six-wheeler lorries , will be put on hold pending a meeting between the government and lawmakers, Cooperatives Minister Ferry Juliantono said on Thursday (Feb 26).

They were slated for use in President Prabowo Subianto’s drive to establish more than 80,000 community cooperatives across the archipelago nation.

Pausing is “the right step to avoid further controversy”, Juliantono said. “And when the time comes, we will be able to sit down together to find the best solution.”

The proposed imports have touched a nerve in Jakarta at a time when other foreign automakers with a large Indonesian manufacturing presence – such as Toyota – are struggling to regain their pre-pandemic footing in South-east Asia’s largest economy.

Car sales fell 7.2 per cent in 2025 to 803,687 units, data compiled by Bloomberg revealed. Weak household spending and cautious lending have weighed on demand.

Juliantono said Prabowo had ordered lorries as part of his plan to serve thousands of cooperatives – village-level hubs envisaged as bases for basic goods such as cold storage and subsidised fertiliser.

The cooperatives could also provide loan services, letting the government bypass chains of regional administration to directly reach millions of rural residents.

Mumbai-based Mahindra said earlier in February the deal would have been its biggest export orders.

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It was set to deliver 35,000 Scorpio Pik Ups this year to “enable village-level commerce” and support Indonesia’s “national food-security transformation”.

An Indonesian unit of Tata Motors said its order of some 35,000 Yodha pick-ups and 35,000 Ultra T.7 lorries was the company’s largest into Indonesia.

Representatives for Mahindra and Tata Motors did not immediately respond to requests for a comment.

But Indonesian business associations have pushed back against the truck-import plan, saying it flies in the face of the government’s goals to encourage industrialisation and create jobs.

The industry ministry earlier in February noted that Indonesia’s automotive industry has the ability to produce around one million pick-up trucks a year.

Alongside Toyota, other foreign automakers with a manufacturing presence in the country include Suzuki Motor and Mitsubishi Motors.

Industry Minister Agus Gumiwang Kartasasmita said that if around 70,000 pick-up lorries were instead made and assembled domestically, the benefit to the Indonesian economy would be about 27 trillion rupiah (S$2 billion) and the creation of jobs.

Earlier this week, Sufmi Dasco Ahmad, the parliament deputy speaker and a high-ranking member of Prabowo’s Gerindra Party, also called for a halt to the imports until the president returns from overseas travel.

Prabowo returned early on Friday.

The Indonesian procuring body was to be Agrinas Pangan Nusantara, a recently established, state-owned company tasked with boosting food self-sufficiency, including by supporting large-scale agricultural projects. BLOOMBERG