Indonesia's Finance Minister Purbaya Yudhi Sadewa has confirmed the dismissal of Budget Director-General Luky Alfirman following a controversial procurement scandal involving 21,801 electric motorcycles for the National Nutrition Agency's Free Nutritious Meals program.
The admission, reported by Detik Finance, revealed an extraordinary lapse in bureaucratic oversight under President Prabowo Subianto's administration. When pressed by journalists about the reason for Alfirman's removal, Purbaya responded bluntly: "Motor MBG, maybe. You can guess for yourself."
The minister acknowledged being "bypassed" by his own system after explicitly rejecting the motorcycle procurement proposal last year. "Last year we already refused to buy motorcycles for the National Nutrition Agency. I rejected it," Purbaya explained at a budget press conference. "But there was a leak from a certain process that bypassed it, so the software didn't detect it, and it got through."
The scandal exposes a critical vulnerability in Indonesia's budget management systems. Alfirman, who had designed the expenditure approval software (SPPG) himself, apparently knew how to circumvent its controls. "It was him who made the SPPG software, that's why I got bypassed by him," Purbaya said with remarkable candor. "But now we've fixed it."
The minister removed both Alfirman and Fiscal and Economic Strategy Director-General Febrio Kacaribu on April 21, though the motorcycle scandal only came to public attention weeks later. The procurement involved purchasing thousands of electric motorcycles ostensibly for delivering nutritious meals—a use case that raised questions about appropriateness and value for money.
