Sumitro Djojohadikusumo (EVO: Soemitro Djojohadikoesoemo; 27 May 19179 March 2001) was an Indonesian statesman and one of the country's most influential economists. He held ministerial positions under Presidents Sukarno and Suharto intermittently between 1950 and 1978. During his career in government, Sumitro served as minister of industry and trade, minister of finance, and the minister of research in five different cabinets. He was also the dean of the Faculty of Economics at the University of Indonesia.
Born into a Javanese family, he studied economics at the Netherlands School of Economics in Rotterdam in the Netherlands and remained there throughout World War II. Returning to Indonesia after the war, he was assigned to the country's diplomatic mission in the United States, where he sought to raise funds and garner international attention in the struggle against Dutch colonialism. After the handover of sovereignty as a result of the 1949 Dutch–Indonesian Round Table Conference, in which he took part, he joined the Socialist Party and became Minister for Trade and Industry in the Natsir Cabinet. He implemented the protectionist Benteng program, and developed an economic plan which aimed for national industrialization. Sumitro further served as finance minister in the cabinets of Prime Ministers Wilopo and Burhanuddin Harahap during the Sukarno era. During the 1950s, Sumitro favoured foreign investment, an unpopular position at that time which brought him into conflict with the nationalists and communists.
Due to political differences and allegations of corruption, Sumitro fled Jakarta and joined the insurrectionary Revolutionary Government of the Republic of Indonesia in the late 1950s. Considered a leader of the movement, he operated from abroad, liaising with Western foreign intelligence organizations while seeking funds and international support. After the movement's defeat, Sumitro remained in exile as a vocal critic of Sukarno, continuing to agitate for the downfall of the government. After the overthrow of Sukarno and the establishment of the New Order under Suharto, Sumitro was invited to return from exile and in 1967 was appointed Minister of Trade. In this position Sumitro set policies favouring industrialization through imports of capital goods and export restrictions of raw materials. He was involved in the high-level planning of Indonesia's economy, along with many of his former students from the University of Indonesia.
After disagreements with Suharto on policy in the early 1970s, Sumitro was reassigned as minister of research before his removal from government posts altogether. Throughout the New Order, Sumitro leveraged his foreign and political connections to establish substantial private business interests and a political presence for his family. As his son Prabowo Subianto joined the military and married Suharto's daughter, Sumitro also continued to work as an economist with some influence during the 1980s. In the leadup to the 1997 Asian financial crisis, he began to call for greater deregulation of the economy but remained committed to the political structure of the New Order. Following his death, his children and grandchildren remain influential in Indonesian politics, with his son Prabowo becoming the eighth president of Indonesia in 2024.
Early life
Sumitro was born in Kebumen on 27 May 1917. He was the eldest child of Margono Djojohadikusumo, a high ranking civil servant in the colonial government of the Dutch East Indies and later founder of Bank Negara Indonesia, and Siti Katoemi Wirodihardjo. The Djojohadikusumo family was part of the Javanese aristocracy's lower rungs. He studied at a Europeesche Lagere School (a school typically serving European children), then an (a school for native Indonesians going into the civil service) in Banyumas.
After finishing secondary education in 1935, he commenced tertiary studies at the Netherlands School of Economics in Rotterdam. Obtaining his bachelor's degree in 1937, he then took a one-year course in philosophy and history at Sorbonne University. In his autobiography Sumitro claimed that he wanted to join the International Brigades in the Spanish Civil War and had briefly joined a training camp in Catalonia, but he was rejected because he was too young. In a 1986 recollection, Sumitro stated that he instead began to fundraise for the cause of Republican Spain. During his studies, he joined an Indonesian students' organization which aimed to promote Indonesian arts and culture.
He was completing his dissertation at Rotterdam in May 1940 when German forces invaded the Netherlands, and during the Rotterdam Blitz he was nearly killed by a Luftwaffe bomb which destroyed one of the walls to his room. He still completed his dissertation, "The People's Credit Service during the Depression", and earned his doctorate in 1943. This made him the first Indonesian to earn a PhD in economics. During the later stages of the war in Europe, after the conclusion of his studies, he helped provide aid to stranded Indonesian sailors in Rotterdam. Meanwhile, the Perhimpoenan Indonesia student association (which Sumitro was not part of) took part in the Dutch resistance mostly by distributing anti-Nazi pamphlets. Before the war, Sumitro had decided not to join the association due to the presence of communists such as . Unable to return to Indonesia during wartime, he spent his time studying the Indonesian economy.
National Revolution
Early revolution
After the end of World War II Sukarno proclaimed Indonesian independence on 17 August 1945. Sumitro briefly joined a Dutch delegation taking part in the first United Nations Security Council (UNSC) meeting in London in January 1946 as an advisor to Dutch foreign minister Eelco van Kleffens. According to British reports, Sumitro had been included in the delegation to provide a good impression for the Dutch government, but he became disillusioned and decided to return to his home country. An Indonesian report, in contrast, stated that Sumitro did not act in support of the restoration of Dutch rule and had attended the meeting to assess the international mood regarding Indonesian independence. During that meeting, Ukraine, the Soviet Union, and Egypt proposed a draft resolution calling for UN involvement in Indonesia, but this was rejectedSumitro believed this was due to the lack of an Indonesian delegation in the meeting. Sumitro's brief experience at the Security Council allowed him to inform other Indonesian nationalists about its procedures, once he returned to Java in March 1946.
He joined the newly formed government of the Republic of Indonesia which had declared itself independent from Dutch colonial rule with Sukarno as president. Sumitro became an assistant to Prime Minister Sutan Sjahrir and later worked at the Ministry of Finance. By this time Dutch forces under the Netherlands Indies Civil Administration had returned to Indonesia to retake control, but they had managed to hold only several coastal cities at first. In late June 1946, Sumitro was part of Sjahrir's entourage in Surakarta when the group was kidnapped by disgruntled army units led by Major General Sudarsono, commander of a division within the Indonesian Army. During the political wrangling and coup attempt that followed, the group was relocated to Yogyakarta; their kidnappers planned to force Sukarno to remove Sjahrir and appoint a new cabinet, as Sudarsono considered Sjahrir's diplomatic approaches to the Dutch to be too lenient. Due to a botched attempt to kidnap another minister, Amir Sjarifuddin, most of Sudarsono's soldiers failed to show up to Sukarno's palace, only the prisoners and a handful of troops being there with Sudarsono. Sukarno refused the demands, Sudarsono was arrested, and Sjahrir along with his group were released.
Later in 1946 Sumitro was assigned to the Indonesian observer delegation to the United Nations as deputy chief of mission and minister plenipotentiary for economic affairs, while he unofficially engaged in fundraising. He would remain in this posting until 1950. With the ongoing revolution, the Dutch had banned the shipment of goods to or any exports of agricultural products from ports controlled by Republican forces. In effect, this was an embargo on Indonesian-controlled territories, and Sumitro was charged with bypassing it. On one occasion in 1947, American cargo ship SS Martin Behrman carrying cargo from the Indonesian-controlled city of Cirebon was seized by Dutch marines. Sumitro had arranged the ship's voyage despite expecting a Dutch seizure, as the delegation calculated that the media attention would be invaluable. The ship's seizure prompted anger from the National Maritime Union, and a US congressional investigation was considered, until it was released. Sumitro quoted Sjahrir as saying "we lost $3million of cargo, but we couldn't have paid for the public attention." While in the United States, Sumitro also signed a contract with American businessman Matthew Fox to form the Indonesian–American corporation, an agent for bilateral trade of several commodities between the two countries with a ten-year licence.
Diplomatic talks Following the 1948 Operation Kraai, a large-scale Dutch offensive against Republican-held territories which captured most of the Indonesian leadership, Sumitro and members of the Indonesian UN delegation (led by L. N. Palar) were vital in maintaining international awareness of the Indonesian situation. Previously the Indonesian delegation had been ignored, but the military operation brought Indonesia to the forefront of attention, and after a meeting with Under Secretary of State Robert A. Lovett, Sumitro gave a press conference which was prominently featured in American media. The New York Times, for example, published in its entirety a memorandum from Sumitro condemning Dutch actions and calling for the cessation of American aid (i.e. the Marshall Plan) to the Netherlands. Sumitro later headed the Indonesian embassy in the United States as a charge d'affaires ad interim, serving from 9 January until the presentation of credentials by the inaugural ambassador Ali Sastroamidjojo on 20 February 1950.
During the final negotiations on the handover of Indonesian sovereignty Sumitro led the economic and financial subcommittee. In these negotiations, while the Dutch calculated that the Indonesians would have to take on debt passed on from the Dutch East Indies government amounting to over 6billion guilders, Sumitro argued the opposite: that a significant proportion of the debts (around 2billion guilders) were created to fund the Dutch effort against Indonesian forces during the revolution and hence should not be paid by the Indonesian government. Instead, he calculated that the Dutch government would owe Indonesia 500million guilders. The Dutch eventually agreed to not include the military spending, and an agreement was struck that the Indonesian government would be responsible for 4.3billion guilders in debt (then equivalent to US$1.13billion) to be paid in full by July 1964. Sumitro wanted to negotiate down the debt further, but was overridden by Vice President Mohammad Hatta. Hatta further overrode Sumitro on the question of sovereignty over Western New Guinea, and on the selection of De Javasche Bank, the colonial central bank, as Indonesia's central bank over the nationalist Bank Negara Indonesia (founded by his father Margono in 1946).
Cabinet minister
Minister of industry and academia