ax revenue in the first five months of this year recorded a considerable growth from the previous year, pointing to as an indication of economic recovery, Finance Minister Purbaya Yudhi Sadewa said on Friday.
Speaking at a press conference in Jakarta on June 5, Purbaya revealed that tax revenue grew 22.1 percent year-on-year (yoy) until the end of May.
“All this shows that there’s real improvement in the economy. When there are critiques saying that the economy is only good on paper but not on the ground, I don’t turn a deaf ear to those comments. I check all the data, including this one, and ask if they’re true,” he said.
“Well, here it looks like everything is going up, everything is growing fast. These data show that there are improvements in the economy that are actually happening. So, the finance minister does not lie, the government does not lie,” the minister added.
Tax revenue had been growing at a much faster pace than last year, reaching as high as 30 percent since the start of the year. However, this growth can largely be attributed to a base effect, as tax collection was weak in the first few months of 2025 due to problems implementing the new tax administration platform, Coretax.
A case in point is how tax revenue grew 20.7 percent yoy in March but the state only managed to collect Rp 394.8 trillion (US$21.8 billion), only marginally exceeding the Rp 393.9 trillion collected in March 2024.
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However, the figures appear to have improved significantly this May when the government collected Rp 834.4 trillion, far more than the Rp 760 trillion and Rp 683 trillion it collected in May 2024 and May 2025, respectively.
